ReMastering HOWTO for DSL

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: ReMastering HOWTO for DSL
started by: meo

Posted by meo on April 14 2004,19:11

First of all I want to make clear that I'm not taking any credit for these remastering HOWTOS. I have just kind of "translated" posts from nucpc and Del so that even a newbie or a selflearned DSL-enthusiast (as myself) might understand HOWTO get into the wonders of remastering DSL. As you can se of the instructions below my "playaround partition" is hda3 (if you have another just replace hda3 with your own).

I usually keep scripts, studyprojects and whatever I want to have handy in a directory on a usb-drive. That makes it easy to copy it to what will be the home directory on the live cd. In that way all I have to take along is the live cd, knowing it's all right there (and perhaps some favorite mp3's on the usb-drive):

(Don't forget to mount your usb-drive first with mount.app if you try this)

Boot with this floppy to try if your new KNOPPIX-image works (Then burn it if you like)

I must point out that I have not done it this way myself yet, so I can't tell if I got it wrong. If I have got it wrong please post a correction in this forum. This HOWTO is derived from a post by Del and I might have missed out in the "translation". If so keep me posted!

I hope this post will be useful for some that would like to get into the wonders of remastering DSL (this wonderful little distribution of linux) and making their own personalized copy of it.

Have a lot of fun (as I have had),meo

Posted by meo on April 16 2004,18:12

Works for DSL 0.6.3!

The first HOWTO (manually copying) works for the most resent release of DSL. The only thing that is different is that there are no autorun files on the new version. So just omitting the two lines copying autorun.bat and autorun.inf will work just fine. There is also the possibility to copy these two files from a DSL 0.6.2 cd version and get the autorun feature to work (I did this on my remastering).

So keep up having fun,meo

Posted by firefly2442 on April 16 2004,20:21

Thanks! I'll have to give it a shot.

Posted by mineeme401 on April 22 2004,21:07

Instead of using a seperate partition, is it possible to save your files on say a zip 250mb drive(or a usb flash drive)? I would like to play around with remastering, but I don't want to have to make a seperate partition.Thanks

Posted by meo on April 23 2004,12:40

Very nice idea mineeme401! I just had to try to remaster on a usb-drive (since I have one). It works!!! Just remember to format the usb-drive with ext2 filesystem (i tried with vfat first but it didn't work). From within DSL, before mounting, do like this: $mke2fs /dev/sda1 and you are all set. Just a word about the specs of my box. I have 256 MB of ram and a 1 GB big swap-file on my harddrive. My usb-drive is 256 MB also and there was no problem at all to make a remaster on it. I have not tried on a zip-drive yet but it might work also. Give it a shot and tell me how it works.

P.S. I'm posting this from the remaster made on the usb D.S.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on April 23 2004,12:56

Nice idea mineeme401! I just had to try to ramaster on a usb-drive (since I have one). It Works!!! Just remember to format the usb-drive with ext2 before remastering on it. I tried vith vfat first, but it didn't work. From within DSL open a shell and do like this: $mke2fs /dev/sda1 and you are all set. Just something on the specs on my box. I have a laptop with 256 MB of ram and a 1 GB big swap-file. The usb-drive is a 256 MB and there were no troubles at all to make a remaster on it. I have not tried on a zip-drive yet but I might. So give it a shot and tell me how it works out.

P.S. I made this post from within the remaster made on the usb-drive using gLinks D.S.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on April 23 2004,17:09

OOps! Well when editing the last post became two. Frankly I do not know how! Anyway I just had to test remastering on a 250 zip-disc also. An external one by the way. It worked!!! So there is no need to set up a special partition to remaster DSL if you either have a 256 MB usb-drive or a zip-drive that takes 250 MB discs. Even an external one with usb 1.1 interface. OK, thats all!

P.S. Posted with a live-DSL remastered on a 250 zip-disc D.S.

Keep on having fun with DSL,Best wishes meo

Posted by cpr on April 23 2004,18:06

Gentlemen,

So far, I am having good learning progression on how to remaster this dsl baby. I succeeded in putting firefox, thunderbird and my own wallpaper. I figured out how to include some additional bookmark in the firefox using the .phoenix file in skel.

I am now getting deeper on my remaster and therefore looking for some advance expert help on how-to.

First query: how would like to know where is the file to modify the x setting when we boot. Ie the choice of mouse, xvesa, size dpi and so on. I would like to automate some questions like size and bit, change the default. Where is that file and script on the not installed-disk.

Second query: how to automate dsl toram as a default if nothing is written on screen. I looked at the f2 boot option and sysconfig file, but I see nothing on toram therefore assume it is on the vmlinux??

Remastering dsl is a fum learning experience!!

Posted by mineeme401 on April 23 2004,19:37

I just remembered, my zip disk is 250, but I think it is paralell (well which ever one is the printer port). This will cause a problem won't it?I really want to do this. I guess I will just have to get a usb drive instead.Thanks mineeme401

Posted by Rapidweather on April 24 2004,01:59

The file you want to look at is /usr/sbin/xsetup.sh---You can make your changes, and run the file to see the various results. ---On the subject of remastering, I have updated my Getting Started Guide, thatI have in my remaster:---< http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/getting_started.html >---I am not distributing Rapidweather Remaster of Damn Small Linux, but as youcan see from the Getting Started Guide, it's working fairly well for me.Although I have remastered 0.6.3, there were too many things that didn't work, in the original, so I have stayed with 0.6.2. One thing was the shutdown/reboot script, the other thing was XMMS.0.6.2 works very well for me, and I use it for a "master" for my remaster. ---

Posted by meo on April 24 2004,10:44

Mineeme401 give it a shot anyway. You never know, it might just work. Just don't use the "toram" option when you boot. I did and the cpu on my box just went ballistic. So give it a try!

Best wishes,meo

Posted by charpie on April 25 2004,17:25

My 6.3 remaster works like a charm. I use it as my master and when ready for a trial i just make an iso (knoppix) then using xp and ultra iso i just switch the knoppix file before burning the disk. so far so good.The only terminal commenad i use is

*HELP*Anyone knows how to have emelfm copy file with the same level of permission as the terminal. Can we set the su command permanently? sometimes it does not let me copy files and i have to use the terminal. Which is much longer!!!!!

Posted by cbagger01 on April 26 2004,01:45

Open a terminal.

Type:

sudo su

and then type

emelfm

An emelfm window will then appear with 'root' authority. You can now move or delete files that only a 'root' user is allowed.

Good Luck.

Posted by charpie on April 26 2004,02:23

hey thanks very much! Much easier then the text mode in terminal.

Posted by meo on April 30 2004,12:37

Since this topic seems to gain a lot of interest I would like to add complete instructions on HOWTO remaster on an external USB-drive:

Remastering HOWTO for Damn Small Linux ( USB Zip-Drive)

Change the keyboard-layout (unless you have a us-keyboard)$sudo loadkeys se-latin1$startx

Format the zip-disc with ext2 filesystem$sudo mke2fs /dev/sda4

Become root and mount the right partition$sudo su#mount -rw /dev/sda4 /mnt/sda4

Copy the iso-file to the first partition on the HD (Or where you have a cd-burning prog.)#cp /mnt/sda4/zipdsl.iso /mnt/hda1

Finished! Just burn it!

As you can see the USB-drive turns up as sda4. Furthermore I have swedish keyboard as you can see. I keep the files I want to add in the Docs and styles directories on hda1. That makes it easy for me to remaster as soon as a new version appears. Hope this was of some interest!

Have fun y'all,meo

Posted by charpie on May 02 2004,16:29

I did a remaster using the apt-get method. I have install a small program 50k

now my remaster is much bigger the the original ie 61meg vs 56meg. I guess this has something to do with the dpkg restore fonction and the database. I can I get read of it to go back to the original size plus my program obtaines through apt-get.

I try removing var/lib/dpkg but still there is other file somewhere. Can I just use the apt-get remove dpkg?? It seems to be willing to remove fluxbox and a lot of stuff probabley essential to dsl

Posted by nucpc on May 02 2004,19:10

Charpie, you might consider doing it "manually" (i.e. without apt-get and dpkg restored) if it's only afew things you want to add. You're perfectly placed now to go to < http://packages.debian.org/stable >and check the file listing of the item you have installed (i.e. everything it put into /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc)and all its dependencies, which can be tricky to find, but apt-get will have told you what else itinstalled.

Now with your latest remastering running on the machine and a freshly opened 0.6.3 KNOPPIX file on yourworking area you can copy from your remaster everything that is on the list, forgetting the documentationunless you want it. As long as you get everything your new item will work and you'll only have addedsomething like 20k (50k compressed) to your DSL.

If you miss something it'll tell you what libraries it can't find and then you'll need to add these and tryagain (handy to check the KNOPPIX file if you can before making your final iso). Obviously this is abit of a brute-force way of doing things but it'll keep your remastering small and it'll certainly fit backonto a business card CD.

The above is exactly the way I started doing light remastering......if you watch your apt-get carefullyyou'll soon get the hang of it.

Posted by enrico on May 04 2004,07:25

I have a new laptop without the floppy drive !!!I wonder if someone can explain me how to test adsl remaster... (maybe using syslinux from windows...?)Thanks

Posted by meo on May 04 2004,17:17

Well, enrico, I can tell you how I usually do. I just burn my remaster to a CD-RW to try it out. If I'm not happy with it I just erease it and try again. It just takes a couple of minutes to burn it so I don't see the need of trying a kind of shortcut in this matter. When I'm happy with my remaster I burn it to a 50 MB CD-R. Hope it works OK!

Have fun,meo

Posted by dslfool on May 05 2004,08:30

Tried the remaster procedure and ran into a few problems.

Forgive the stupid question, but when installing new packages for a remaster, where are they being installed to? Do I understand correctly that they're being installed into the ramdisk and are later in the process copied (with everything else) to the hard drive for imaging? If this is correct, I've a few questions:

- As there's no "enhanced" install when booting DSL from CD, is there no way to create a master with the full command set as opposed to BusyBox?

- On a 256MB system there's not enough room in the ramdisk to install OpenOffice - can this be installed to the hard drive and still be included in the image?

- Is there a way to do a complete (enhanced) DSL install to a hard drive, then boot from CD and image the hard drive install to another partition?

Posted by meo on May 05 2004,16:46

No the things you install in a remaster are not installed to ramdisk. They are installed to your targetpartition, being on the harddrive, zip- or usb-drive.

Have fun,meo

Posted by woverin on May 06 2004,08:07

Thanks for the great howtos , meoI ran into a problem.When I boot with my remaster live cd, i can't apt-get update. It says somethings about permission denied. (/var/apt/cache/archieve) During remaster should i chmod 755 some directories ?What should I need to clean up after remastering ?I prefer to leave apt-get, enhance (GNU tar util) alone. I don't care so much about space

I did follow your DSL remastering HOWTO (Reinstalling apt-get).I reinstalled apt-get and enhance(download dsl-sys.tar.gz and extract manually), so my remaster do not need to download any files from internet later.I apt-get install/remove severals packages. Then i made cloop and iso successfully.

Posted by viper92225 on May 07 2004,10:14

i am extreamly new to linux and first things first, dsl seems like a great distro

i am trying to put dsl on a usb thumbdrive but when i try the $sudo mke2fs /dev/sda4 command i get this errormke2fs: no such device or address while trying to determine filesystem size

do i have to change the sda4 to something else and if so how do i find out whatthanks in advance for any reply

Posted by ed on May 07 2004,17:41

Hi!

I've followed the instructions and am trying to boot form the floppy disk, however I'm getting sent to the knoppix minimal shell. Does the location of compressed file system matter?, how does the software search for the location of the compressed file system, I'm not quite clear on that.

I'm also wondering if there's a way to customize which default kernel parameters are set in the remastered distro, for instance I'm working with a flat-planel, and it doesn't like vga=791

Also, why does the instructions say to use the 'testing' branch.. is it safe to use the stable (default) configuration of sources.list?

thanks in advance,

-ed

Posted by woverin on May 07 2004,18:36

viper92225, plug in your usb stick before your boot into DSLbring up a terminal and typefdisk -l you should see a your /sdaX

it seems that when I do a dpkg-query -l, many packages are missing from that list

thanks again,

-ed

Posted by clivesay on May 07 2004,23:39

Can you remaster from within X once you chroot KNOPPIX and mount proc? I tried to do this by using startx and it wouldn't work. Thanks

Posted by ed on May 09 2004,15:55

I'm working in X to remaster DSL, seems to be working fine, what's the problem?

-ed

Posted by clivesay on May 10 2004,02:09

Thanks for the reply,ed.

I am following the remstering how-to reinstalling apt.

I follow the 5 steps listed. I chroot and mount proc outside of X and then type "startx". I get through the setup routine with the server and mouse settings and then I am kicked out to a command prompt.

The error I get is:

xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): no program named "/root/.xinitrc" in path.

I am guessing that I have left something out but I am not sure what.

Thanks for your help!

Chris

Posted by KnightFire on May 11 2004,14:41

Quote (viper92225 @ May 07 2004,06:14)

i am trying to put dsl on a usb thumbdrive but when i try the $sudo mke2fs /dev/sda4 command i get this errormke2fs: no such device or address while trying to determine filesystem size

Hmmm... how have you determined that it's the fourth partition on your USB ThumbDrive that needs formatting?Will $sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda produce a partition listing for you? What of sdb, sdc, sdd...

Posted by clivesay on May 12 2004,12:32

Can someone helpme with my problem? Thanks

I am following the remstering how-to reinstalling apt.

I follow the 5 steps listed. I chroot and mount proc outside of X and then type "startx". I get through the setup routine with the server and mouse settings and then I am kicked out to a command prompt.

The error I get is:

xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): no program named "/root/.xinitrc" in path.

I am guessing that I have left something out but I am not sure what.

Posted by meo on May 14 2004,08:35

Sorry clivesay! I don't exactly understand what you mean. Usually you remaster from within x in a terminal. That is what I do. Please explain a little more explicit how you do it. I have just tried to remaster the new 0.7 version and it works great! That together with the new function mydsl (funny that is what I call my remaster isos; mydsl.iso) is perfect. Very good work!!!

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by clivesay on May 14 2004,14:32

Thanks, meo

I guess my question then is can you run all of the remastering commands from a terminal inside X and then save the changes made to the current running X session?

I am asking this because a remaster I did of another distro required me to chroot outside of X and then startx to get into the X environment for remaster.

Thanks

Chris

Posted by meo on May 14 2004,16:26

As I understand it you can do just that. Run all the commands from the shell to make your remaster. Then just burn it and you're done!

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on May 17 2004,16:40

I just want to drop a few lines from my new remaster of the 0.7 version of DSL. It is really marvellous what can be done to this distro and still fit on a business-card cd of 50 MB. I love the new mydsl function. The only things I put into my remasters are some nice themes for fluxbox and xmms. There is still room for a bunch of study projects that I have going on. It all still fits on a 50 MB cd. Isn\t it amazing. Finally I want to mention that usually a usb-zip drive comes up as sda4 and a usb-drive, for example a thumb-drive, comes up as sda1. An easy way to check this is to use the mount app and look what partitions it recognize. That\s all for now!

Have fun out there,meo

Posted by jedi0473 on May 18 2004,00:02

hi i would like to use the script that permits to create your own dsl but i dont have any idea bout where to start, so please give some idea. where this script have to be placed and what do i have to change?

thank u PS. send me a pm please

#!/bin/sh. /etc/init.d/dsl-functions

echoecho "${RED}Damn Small Linux ${WHITE}remaster ${BLUE}myDSL.${NORMAL}"echo "${YELLOW}No responsibility for data loss or hardware damage!${NORMAL}"echo " "echo "You must have two working directories large enough to hold the image file,"echo "and desired modules. You must also have a cdwriter installed."echoecho "If your boot CD and CD writer are the same device then you should"echo "be running with the ${RED}toram${NORMAL} option."echoecho "Later you will be prompted to remove the DSL cdrom."echo

Frankly I don't understand the thought to use a script to make your own DSL cd. As I have explained beginning this topic there are two ways to remaster your own DSL cd. Either you can copy manually what you want to your target partition and then make an iso-image (this is the way I do it and it works great and fast around just 20 minutes and it's time to burn the new remaster). The other way is to chroot into the new environment and reinstall apt-get (i tried but as I'm stuck with a dial-up connection it's not a good option). So if a script would be better; please explain!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on May 27 2004,18:54

Why doing a remaster? Well I do it to add some nice themes for fluxbox that has become my favourites since the time of blackbox (like "deadtux" or newer "GreenEyes"). Just add the style-files in the /usr/share/fluxbox/styles directory. Choose where you want to put the backgrounds. I just create the /home/damnsmall/backgrounds directory and put them all there. Just remember to edit the style-file so it points to the directory where the backgrounds are. I have managed to add 11 new themes with backgrounds (from 150 k to up to almost 600 k each) and still fit on a businesscard-cd. The iso-file was 51.3 MB and I didn't think it would work, but it did. So now I'm all set with beautiful themes and the docs that are indispensable to me right on the dsl-cd. Wonderful (I think)!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by hasty on May 28 2004,07:02

I'm with jedixxx on this as I'm constantly tinkering with my setup, seeking the perfect iso

Would love to see a remastering script.(hate all that blasted typing)

Just get it setup the way you want & run the script to achieve perfection.

Posted by roberts on May 28 2004,13:57

jedi0473,The script that you posted is the mkmydsl script. It is not a full remastering script. It is intended to be run from the liveCD as an aide to making a myDSL custom cdrom.For example if your computer has a bootable cd which also happens to be a cd burner and a hard drive. On the hard drive you have two directories, one called master, the other called iso. Then boot from liveCD like this:

boot: dsl 2 toram# mount /mnt/hdb# mkmydsl

It is very quick and easy to burn a cd with the myDSL extensions.

You can also have themes using myDSL, see the blue-curve myDSL extension in the download section.

A new version mkmydsl will be included with the 7.1 release.

Posted by Dud3! on May 31 2004,17:04

I noticed that the apps I checked (dillo and a naim) were compiled for i386. I need to compile the programs I'm adding for i386 (on my i686). Can anyone tell me how to do this?

I'm searching now, but I figured someone here could tell me or point me in the right direction.

Posted by meo on June 05 2004,10:19

I just want to mention that I have made a remaster of the 0.7.1 version and it works very well. I have added 10 themes for fluxbox and some docs that I want to have at hand at all times ("wherever I lay my hat is my home"). The new functions makes it very easy to take with you the extensions you like wherever you go! Thanks for a really good work!

Have fun everyone,meo

Posted by rlwrenn on June 06 2004,03:00

I want to add my script to /etc/ppp/peers on a remastered cd. So am I right to add it to the /source directory as "/mnt/hda3/source/etc/ppp/peers/myscript" per the example given in this forum?

Posted by meo on June 07 2004,10:01

Dear rlwrenn it seems to be just the right way to get your script where you want it, so give it a shot and I think it will all turn out well!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on Aug. 23 2004,19:01

I just completed a remaster of DSL 0.7.3 and I had to make some changes to make it work. Here is the complete procedure i use:

This way it works like a charm. I also want to take the opportunity to thank you guys that work constantly with DSL for such a fine work. There are so few people that want to make good things for others today without getting paid for it. So keep up your excellent work!

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by ico2 on Aug. 31 2004,13:52

great howto, i will be doing my remaster in a week or so.

one thing:

a more intelligent way to solve the "need to be root in emelfm" prob is to use ctrl-alt-delete to exit X, type sudo su and then type startx, you are now root for everything you do (note: use with caution)

Posted by meo on Sep. 01 2004,19:00

Please, help me? Help me? I have tried to remaster the 0.8 version but it doesn't work using the procedure I just described concerning the 0.7.3 version. It seems to me that the init process is dramatically changed in the most rescent version. If anyone has a clue how to make it work I think many enthusiasts would be grateful. Thanks beforehand!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by clacker on Sep. 02 2004,03:00

meo, here is what I did for 0.8.0 that worked (it drove me nuts, but clivesay saved the day with the last line). You need to copy the boot & lost+found directories to the new cd, as well as the index.html file. Also the -b and -c files have changed in the final mkisofs command, in addition to a boat load more switches to worry about:

I think in that create_compressed_fs command, you can use the -b (best) switch if you want. It makes the iso image smaller.

Posted by clivesay on Sep. 02 2004,03:34

clacker -

Those mkisofs commands can wear you out if you remaster very often! I create a compress.sh and an iso.sh script to speed everything up.

Chris

Posted by Personalized remaster on Sep. 02 2004,19:12

I wonder does anyone happen to know where Sylpheed keeps its information?

I'm building a remaster (removing software I don't use, adding in some nice stuff), but the last thing I want to do before committing to a disc is to add my e-mail logins (I have five accounts - a pain to enter in every time you boot off of some random computer). I don't want to bring my whole Home directory with me, but just taking the .sylpheed folder doesn't seem to do anything.

Posted by clacker on Sep. 02 2004,21:45

If you're trying to add sylpheed settings to a remaster, you need to copy both the .sylpheed and Mail directories from your home directory to the etc/skel directory of remaster source before you use mkisofs and create_compressed_fs. If you put it in KNOPPIX/home/dsl it doesn't show up after you boot the remastered disk.

Anything you want to wind up in the home/dsl directory needs to go into the etc/skel directory of the remaster.

Posted by meo on Sep. 03 2004,19:49

Thank you to everybody that has helped me forward with this Remastering HOWTO!!! Here it comes ready for the changes in the most recent version 0.8:

If we'd managed to remaster with open office, and used a CD-RW instead of CR-R, could we also then use the remastered CD to do some work offsite with a few Microsoft office files (yes, many people do use them, sadly) on our own laptop, save the docs in word and excel format on a directory on the CD-RW, let colleagues copy the files if necessary from the CD-RW at the end of the day, and then bring back the remastered CD-RW with the extra wrd/xls files and dump them on the main desktop machine?

In other words, could a remastered DSL on CD-RW become a portable and dynamic workspace? (Recognising, of course, you'd periodically run out of space on a CD-RW, but you'd just start another one.)

DSL could be very good for this because it leaves so much spare space on a full size CD. Also, works for machines that can't boot from USB etc.

Essentially, would the script work with CD-RW, and if CD-RW is used, can a rw directory be mounted on it?

Islander

Posted by adraker on Sep. 11 2004,00:01

Meo-

Huge thanks to you for the remaster howto-have just used it on 8.1.1 and the only problem I hadwas my own fault- I wanted to put some things in /home/dsl beforeI made the iso, but of course they are not there when you run live-they are still in the KNOPPIX directory on the cd.But thats no big problem.In hindsight, I should have remembered what Clacker said.Thanks again for taking the time and trouble to post this up-it has been a great help.

Adraker

Posted by Fordi on Sep. 13 2004,20:17

Question:

Is there a Very Good Reason for using mkisofs rather than building an appropriately-sized ext2 image file, then filling it?

The only advantage this has, if it works, is that you have filesystem control at a processing level closer to final product (less to wait for in those "oops! lemme change that one line in /etc/wtf" moments)

I tested manual mount of ext2 as cloop today, so I know that part works (and knows to be read-only)...

Posted by meo on Sep. 21 2004,16:35

Dear Islander!

I don't really know if it is possible to do what you describe using a cd-rw. I use a usb-drive to save my stuff and it works just fine.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on Sep. 22 2004,17:51

First a little comment to Fordi. I don't assume that the way I use to remaster DSL is the best. Your suggestion might be better. But the way I do it I understand and as previously noted I'm a selflearned linux-enthusiast with no formal computer education whatsoever.

I have found some peculiarities with the newest version of DSL when it comes to remastering. It doesn't seem possible to add new directories to the source. That and the fact that it is virtually impossible to get hold of good 50 MB cd-r's here in Sweden are some of the reasons to the new remaster I've put together. Here it comes:

I have opted for doing it all on a 210 MB cd-r wich gives plenty of space for things I want to have handy.

Hopefully these thoughts are to the benefit and fun for someone!

Have fun,meo

Posted by Gabor on Sep. 28 2004,16:11

... a newbie ...I installed some application (to ramdisk) and configured them, but I would like to burn the new CD with installed applications and it would be good if the installed apps would start after boot up automatically. Basicly I installed the Camserv and V4L by synaptic and then configured the network card, modified the Camserv.cfg and started up the Monkey web server.

I did it next way but it does not seem to work, because the apps are not on the new CD. Should I copy something else? What exactly or how?

I find and tried something like that:#mount -t proc /proc proc(Connect to internet)#dpkg-restore#nano /etc/apt/sources.list (Change to the testing branch)Add and remove packages to your liking#umount /proc#ctrl+Dmaybe I am wrong but it does not seem to work either.Could help me some one?Thx!

Gabor

Posted by stoneguy on Oct. 01 2004,02:12

This is way confusing...

My goal is to build 250MB LiveCDs that can be used on systems running some flavour of Windows which don't necessarily have an internet connection. They will range from 64MB 133mx to modern systems with adequate quantities of RAM. Once I get that nailed down, I'd like to add the ability to install DSL if there's unallocated HD space.

The build system is a dual boot Win98/Linux system with a single ext3 partition (plus swap), and a single bootable CDRW.

First off, the examples all start off by creating a blank target partition. Is there some reason I can't use subdirectories on my Linux partition in place of hda1 and hda3 in the examples?

Just why does the last step copy the iso back to hda1? I might want to do that so I can burn under Windows, but is that what is being assumed?

Also, what kind of module should go in /optional? Some components (like j2re) are available as both uci and tar.gz. I got a vague impression that uci files are just for hotloading, but I'm not certain. I want my LiveCD to contain Firefox plus some Bittorrent client to be selected at runtime, not preloaded into RAM.

I hope some of the participants here can set me on the right path.

Posted by meo on Oct. 04 2004,10:28

Stoneguy!

I will soon shed some light on the matters brougt up by you. But for now I have been struggling to be able to make a remaster of DSL 0.8.2 and I just finished a cd to my liking this morning at 1.40 am. So later on I will give some explanations and post the full remaster-HOWTO as I have done it now.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Oct. 04 2004,19:35

Stoneguy!

OK first things first. I would think that you can use a linux partition thar you already have. It should be in ext2 fs (linux native) but maybe it will work with ext3 to. When it comes to copying the mydsl.iso to hda1 yuo're quite right, it's to be able to use my cd-burning program on hda1 (windows). I haven't had any luck with burning under DSL so the easiest way is to copy it to hda1. About the modules I can just tell you what I do. I put modules I want to be able to load from the mydsl-menu in the root of the cd. Modules I want to have handy i put in the options directory. I personally prefer the uci files when available since they seem to consume less ram. OK hope this was of any help to you.

Finally just a note why I have made some changes. It just wasn't working to do the remaster the same way with the 0.8.2 version as the 0.8.1.1 version. I don't know why, i just work by the trial and error method and finally it worked.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by hasty on Oct. 05 2004,06:06

Good thread.

Just an idle thought (one of many)Has anyone tried a remaster in ram, and if so how much would you need ?

Have a gig here and it would be so slick to reburn without hd access.

Posted by meo on Oct. 05 2004,19:42

Hasty!

It's worth a try, so go for it! I have tried sucessfully doing it on a 250 external zip-drive and 256 usb-drive but I only have 256 MB of ram so I'm unable to try it, but if you do let us know the results in this thread.

Have fun,meo

Posted by clacker on Oct. 06 2004,12:26

hasty, it depends on how much you want to change and add. I've remastered in ram with only 256 megs, but only changing the background image and a few minor changes. Then I added the /optional directory to the CD as a multisession step. It definately can be done

Posted by Albert_sr on Oct. 11 2004,07:23

Hi,

I created some scripts to remaster 0.8.2 based on the post above you can find it over here: < Remasterinfo >You can simply boot from a DSL cd, use mydsl to install all the apps you want, run the scripts and you're done.The scripts asume you have a hda5

p.s. I made a few changes compared to the original post to make sure the home dir of dsl is included as well.

Posted by meo on Oct. 11 2004,12:19

Clacker!

Thanks for your post on remastering only in ram (and just 256 MB, just the same amount as i have in my laptop). I just had to try it out! And with some tweaks it worked just fine. Im posting this from this remaster actually. Here comes the complete HOWTO on how I did it:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1 (Here I have my favourite cd-burning program)

In my case I had to delete the whole source-dir in order to make it work. Otherwise i got error messages about not enough space etc. I might mention also that i have a full GB of swap on my drive. And this was the first time I can remember that it was used ever (during the remaster-process). About 10 % was used at the most. OK thats all for now!

All printed out and ready to try when I get some time to myself...................away from animals, children & work,not forgetting a wife who requires quality time

Posted by Marty on Oct. 18 2004,15:07

Hello,

I am trying to build a CD of DSl with some additional applications - eg OpenOffice. I would like these to be available at boot, rather than download each time they are required.

Could someone please clarify if that is possible using the remastering guides posted here? I understand it will not fit on a 50Mb CD, but this is not a concern.

Many thanks,Marty

Posted by meo on Oct. 19 2004,16:29

Marty!

You can do just about everything when remastering according to the HOWTO's posted recently. If you take a peek at the first remaster-HOWTO on page 7 in this thread (directed to "stoneguy" I think) you will find a line copying from a directory called "Bootload" . If you follow the HOWTO, whatever modules found in this directory will load att boot time (that's why I named it "Bootload" in the first place). So just put the modules you want in this directory and be sure they will load at boot time. The "optional" directory is for modules you might want sometimes and they can be loaded whenever you want after booting. I hope this has made it a little clearer to you!

Have fun like always,meo

Posted by Rapidweather on Oct. 19 2004,23:53

I remaster all the time with 256 MB ram, but I do have plenty of swap from my Redhat 9 installation on another partition. Right now, my remaster of DSL 0.8.2 is running about 88 MB. I do use a dual-processor machine to do the work, however. See my signature for the Getting Started Guide that I put in the remaster.

Posted by Mark D Keith on Oct. 20 2004,03:13

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----Hash: SHA1

I tried remastering the DSL with Firefox in the Bootload directory but still have to manually use file to activate it. I was trying to make that when DSL loaded would load some HTML files automaticly. As using CSS sheets the default readers don't read them well.

The CD ia a collection of internet info of a Playstation Game (EverQuest Online Adventures). aka Maps, quest info, wallpaper etc. And wanted the inital html to load automactly if booted with DSL, already autoruns on winboxs if the feature is allowed.GOAL: user friendly, if placed in cd while in windows uses default browserif placed in already linux runing do same (think found what I need to do to work in redhat 9)if booted then DSL pulls up html with firefox in the .xinitrc (still working as firefox not loading at boot, even in theBootload directory.

Any clues be helpfulMark <lover_of_lycra@cox.net>

***Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming~~'Wow~~What a ride!!'***-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

I have found some peculiarities with the newest version of DSL when it comes to remastering. It doesn't seem possible to add new directories to the source.

meo,

Do you happen to recall what was the last version of DSL that allowed adding new directories to the source of a remaster? I've been struggling with that very problem with DSL 0.8.2. I'm thinking that maybe combining DSL 0.8.2 with an earlier CD's boot files/method might do the trick, or perhaps I should just go with an earlier DSL version altogether.

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=3001 >

Posted by meo on Oct. 20 2004,10:12

noclobber!

I think that DSL 0.8 was the last version that would accept copying whole directories to the source without problems. Note thogh that it was possible to copy the "backgrounds" directory to /source/etc/skel/.fluxbox in the most recent version of DSL 0.8.2. Hope this is of any help!

Keep on having fun everybody,meo

Posted by tiny_fan on Oct. 25 2004,20:58

OK, I understand this re-mastering process pretty well but I'm just not getting one point.

I would like to thange the text that first shows after Uncompressing Linux....., ie Welcome DSL - Built Using Knoppix technology....I've tried to modify the /etc/motd file, but nothing changes!What should I do?

Thanks!

Posted by clacker on Nov. 02 2004,20:15

I think those messages might be coming from the boot.msg file, which gets called by isolinux.cfg.

/cdrom/boot/isolinux/boot.msg

try editing that file in the remaster.

Posted by spacegate on Nov. 02 2004,20:29

Nope, i've just found that this message is in the minirt.gz file.But no idea how to modify this one, i've tried to do it manually but then kernel can't mount root I've found this, but no idea on how to use it.< http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixRemasteringHowto >Thanks for your suggestion clacker!

Posted by spacegate on Nov. 02 2004,20:35

WoW i thing i'm on the good way :i did this :gunzip minirt24.gzmkdir minirtmount -o loop -t ext2 minirt24 minirtAnd i get the complete tree of the file in the dir minirt.I'm now trying to find this funny text!

Yep that's just the same, i did exactly like you, i've forgotten to say that I first copied the file.Thanks fort all ;)ByeBye!

Posted by maximus on Nov. 03 2004,00:03

If i were to *gasp* want to modify the kernel, where would i find the source for this distribution? I cannot seem to locate it in any of the download locations, but need to make some modifications for a project I am working on.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 03 2004,00:05

The quickest way to get the sources is to grab the knoppix 5-17-2004 CD.DSL is made from this knoppix build, and the disk includes everything you'll need.

73ke4nt

Posted by Verlorenrivets on Nov. 04 2004,16:27

Once you remaster a CD, if you use the "Copy to Hard Drive" option in the tools menu, will it copy all of your changes or no? If it did, I'd remaster a CD here and now.

Posted by meo on Nov. 11 2004,20:04

Verlorenrivets!

Frankly I don't know! But what I do know is that it works beautifully remastering the most recent versions of DSL just in the RAM. There is no hard-drive space needed as long as you have at least 256 MB of RAM and deletes the source-dir before making the final iso-file. I'm posting this from my remaster of the 0.8.4 version of DSL. Here comes the whole RAM-Remaster-HOWTO again:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1 (Here I have my favourite cd-burning program)

DSL is really an amazing distro. I am constantly surprised by the new versions that keep on coming. I sometimes think that there is nothing that can make it better. But the developers are performning a wonderful work! Thank you for the best distro out there and keep up the good work!

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 19 2004,20:43

Just a little note about my previous post. It works if you aim at an iso-file of about 50 MB. If you are aiming higher you either must have a lot of ram or do it another media. Another thing I discovered this week was that making a remaster is pretty good if the intention is to make a usb-install. The usb-install (frugal) will then be remastered from the very beginning.

Have fun all of you,meo

Posted by Razor Toting Jim on Nov. 19 2004,23:01

Quote (cbagger01 @ April 25 2004,21:45)

Open a terminal.

Type:

sudo su

and then type

emelfm

An emelfm window will then appear with 'root' authority. You can now move or delete files that only a 'root' user is allowed.

Good Luck.

You can also add either a short cut in the start menu or make the emelfm icon on the desktop open as root.

If you want the desktop icon to open as root.go in to the .xtdesktop folder, click on the emelfm.lnkfile and replace the command with sudo /bin/bash -c emelfm.

Or just put the command in you start menu for quick root access in emelfm.

Posted by Rapidweather on Nov. 20 2004,03:59

I use emelfm quite a bit when remastering. I have several partitions that have"masters" in them, and when working on one, I put it in the right pane, andthe live cd is shown in the left pane. Something that needs testing before putting in the master can be copied to the running dsl, and worked with and tested. ---Right now I am running Knoppix 3.4, and learning how to restore. One bigdifference is that in dsl, we can restore anytime, and backup anytime, and it's done. In Knoppix, the backing up of the /home directory goes on all the time, as you surf the web, etc. the knoppix.img is constantly updated, as long as you booted up with that particular partition's knoppix.img loaded, like this:boot: knoppix home=/dev/hdb7Also, there is another restoration file, that is not continually updatedlike knoppix.img. It is "configs.tbz" and one needs to update that whenthings are added, like desktop icons. I did download and place Firefox 1.0 in the /home directory, and also hacked together an Opera 6.03"copy-over" from Redhat 9, in another partition on this machine. Both web browsers work well done that way. Without remasteringKnoppix 3.4, one can only restore files in the /home directory, so one has to find a way to put what you want in there.Ordinary restorations are much easier in dsl. I am getting a perspective on dsl by lookingat the full Knoppix distro, and may soon start remastering it, in additionto the dsl 0.6.2 and 0.8.2 remasters I have now. ---

Posted by meo on Dec. 01 2004,19:00

Hello again!This might be a little beside tho point. I had an urge to fool around with hikarunix 0.2 (which is based on DSL 0.8.2) and subsequently made an remaster of it. The full HOWTO follows below:

Remastering HOWTO for DSL 0.8.2 (And Hikarunix 0.2)

Change the keyboard-layout (unless you have a us keyboard)$sudo loadkeys se-latin1 (I have a swedish keyboard)$startx

Copy the iso-file to a partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp /mnt/hda3/mydsl.iso /mnt/hda2

So if you get the urge to remaster this excellent distro for those who like to play (or learn how to) this might be the answer.

Have fun everybody out there,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 03 2004,12:24

Hello again everybody!Just a quick note that DSL RAM-Remaster works also with the new 0.9.0 DSL. But I'm truly missing xmms! Can anyone enlighten me how I might get it back (perhaps during the remastering-process)? I would greatly appreciate that, because I like xmms so much.

Have fun out there,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 08 2004,18:01

Hi!Yes I know that there is a xmms.dsl file but I would like to get some input on how to recuperate xmms by remastering. Any help is appreciated. Also I have e-mailed John with the suggestion to make blank 50 MB cd-r's available in the DSL-store. Here in Sweden it is impossible to buy that small cd-r's now. I guess that it is the same in many other countries. So I think it could generate some mony for the project. Just a thought!

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by clivesay on Dec. 08 2004,18:25

meo -

You could place the xmms.dsl file into the /home dir of your remaster environment. Then chroot into your remaster and load the .dsl from the commandline. after you are finished, ctrl-D out of the chroot environment. Just remember to remove the xmms.dsl from the /home. dir. I have done this many times.

Chris

Posted by meo on Dec. 09 2004,09:50

Thanks clivesay!This seems like something worth trying.

Have fun,meo

Posted by aqeq on Dec. 16 2004,02:50

I've read the past entries, but I'm still having trouble remastering DSL. So my situation is, I took version 0.8.4, and copied onto my HD (I'm running SuSE 9.1). Then I just add music files, so I don't waste a whole 700MB CD. I copied the music files into a directory, /music/. I made the iso with:mkisofs -l -r -J -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -no-emul-boot -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat -o dslc-0.8.4.iso .

Then I try it out. I get an error message saying,"ISOLINUX 2.04 (Debian, 2003-06-06) isolinux: Image checksum error, sorry...

Boot failed: press a key to retry..."

How can I fix this?Thanks

Posted by meo on Dec. 25 2004,16:45

Hi aqeq!

I'm sorry but with the information you give I can't tell what went wrong in your remaster. Perhaps if you give us some more details about what you actually did to remaster; as where you put the files etc, it would make it clearer. Anyway it works just fine to remaster the latest version of DSL. Personally I'm very glad that xmms made a reapperance in this version (0.9.1). Thank you guys!!!

Have fun out there,meo

Posted by wladston on Dec. 31 2004,03:33

hello!I'm trying to make a remaster on DSL for it to fit on an 31MB KNOPPIX image. (so it can fit even my 32MB USB drive!)

I'm having problens to run x on chrooted DSL...

X runs, but not on DSL user (only on root)

Any trick to start X with the normal DSL enviroment?

oh, and by the way, do you know any apt-getable packet mananger that runs on DSL (dpkg is fine but i wanted to SEE the packet tree!)

However, if you are trying to build a 32MB edition my guess is that you will need console apps and not GUI tools.

There are console-based apt-get frontends that work in a similar fashion. Ironically, one way to locate them is to install Synaptic and use it to search for alternative package managers.

Posted by wladston on Dec. 31 2004,11:42

okay!Thanks for the hint...no luck starting X from DSL user on chroot iet...

I know 32MB is very less, but I wanted to have at LEAST the firefox browser...

let's see....

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 01 2005,08:11

Download the Opera myDSL extension.

It uses less memory than Firefox and is faster on old hardware. For minimal RAM usage, grab the "uci" version of the extension.

Posted by Fordi on Jan. 03 2005,15:34

extract the files from KNOPPIXun-tar.gz xmms.dsl using your KNOPPIX extraction as its root.remaster as normal.

THIS WILL NOT GET YOU THE ENTRY IN THE MYDSL MENU. It will only get you the icon in X.

Posted by Fordi on Jan. 03 2005,15:39

Quote (aqeq @ Dec. 15 2004,21:50)

I've read the past entries, but I'm still having trouble remastering DSL. So my situation is, I took version 0.8.4, and copied onto my HD (I'm running SuSE 9.1). Then I just add music files, so I don't waste a whole 700MB CD. I copied the music files into a directory, /music/. I made the iso with:mkisofs -l -r -J -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -no-emul-boot -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat -o dslc-0.8.4.iso .

Then I try it out. I get an error message saying,"ISOLINUX 2.04 (Debian, 2003-06-06) isolinux: Image checksum error, sorry...

Couple of things:You need to be a directory up, pointing to the CD filesystem with the command (assume the folder's called remaster)the -boot-info-table option is not optional. Neither is -hide-rr-moved or -boot-load-size 4. You need to read meo's latest remastering guide (in this forum).

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

One thing that I discovered when thinking of remastering the embedded DSL, is that it's possible just to delete the original knoppix-file from the usb-drive (where you unzipped the DSL-embedded file) and replace it with your own remastered one (for example done the way described above) and it works just fine. Then you have a remastered embedded usb instantly. Not to bad, or what?

Keep having fun with remastering this wonderfully versatile distro,meo

Posted by Rapidweather on Jan. 07 2005,00:48

One the things I like to do when I remaster is to put the command lines that I usein a document, then I can just copy and paste them into a rxvt. Saves having to key-in all that. Here is what I am currently including in my Knoppix 3.4 remaster:

Quote

******************************************************

These are the command lines used for making Beta 34 Filesystem:

file name is /home/knoppix/download/remaster_command

These are commands used to remaster the Knoppix distribution,and are provided here for copy and paste use:

I am running that remaster now, and of course I put Firefox, Opera, Emelfm, Scite in there, and use the lighter window manager "icewm". Since it is a remaster of Knoppix 3.4, it runs about 680 MB. I have the same sort of thing in my Rapidweather Remaster of Damn Small Linux, now up to version 3.0, after nearly a year. It runs the fluxbox wm, and has both Opera and Firefox, too. Both of these remaster distros are used to make more of them, since all of the tools are there, even the "command lines" to use when the time comes to put it all together. Main problem I have is that apt-get only works in Knoppix, and I have used itin a chroot'ed rxvt to add and remove stuff from the filesystem in NewCD, which is the one that will next be made, not the one currently running. So, I canlook at the Debian packages list in Firefox, using the currently running version, and work on the master copy with apt-get. I use Emelfm a lot, since the double pane setup gives me a way to test a lot of things in the currently running os, before copying over to the master. ---I use a separate partition for the smaller Damn Small remaster, which is based on DSL 0.6.2. I like using it, since it runs on everything.Then, another partition is used to make logo.16's.---Also like using GIMP to fix up nice built-in wallpapers for these remasters.(Gimp, only in my Knoppix 3.4 remaster, not DSL)---I don't use any add on's like .dsl's, but of course I have to have backup tarballs for both, for personal settings. (These are live-CD distro's).

Posted by meo on Jan. 12 2005,23:42

Hi Y'all!I just want to make a request. I would like to be able to order blank 50 MB cd-r's from the DSL-store. Here in Sweden they are nowhere to found nowadays. I guess it is the same way in other countries (so probably many others would have an interest in this). Since remastering this remarkably distro is so popular (at least it seems like it) that would be another reason to make blank 50 MB cd-r's available in the DSL-store. At least for me it would forfeit the purpose to burn a remaster to a larger cd than necessary. It is just so cool to have it all on a creditcard-sized cd. I would be ready to pay "overprice" so as to make a donation to the project. So, please, at least think about it John (and Robert) it would mean a great deal!

Keep on having fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by softgun on Jan. 24 2005,14:55

Quote (meo @ Jan. 06 2005,16:01)

Hi again everybody!Just a quick post telling that it works fine to remaster the 0.9.2 version of DSL just in RAM. Here it comes:

DSL RAM-Remaster HOWTO

One thing that I discovered when thinking of remastering the embedded DSL, is that it's possible just to delete the original knoppix-file from the usb-drive (where you unzipped the DSL-embedded file) and replace it with your own remastered one (for example done the way described above) and it works just fine. Then you have a remastered embedded usb instantly. Not to bad, or what?

Keep having fun with remastering this wonderfully versatile distro,meo

Thanks MEO

Please tell me1. How much RAM do I need?2. At what level do I do my apt-get install?

Posted by idiosynthetic on Feb. 03 2005,11:11

thanks to everyone for the info here, especially the howto by meo. i don't have much ram so i just make the built directories on an ext2 partition.

i have made a remaster for use on my friends computer which has a tendency to lock up when it's meant to be providing musical entertainment, sometimes windows just can't take the pressure basically the rest of the cd is filled with music which i put in newcd/music, can fit about 10 albums on there. when it boots up xmms starts playing it all and runs the blursk visualisation plugin. will make a new version if i can get some more hardcore visualisation to run on dsl.

softgun, maybe you want to chroot into source for the apt-get, not sure tho as i haven't done this.

thank you to the dsl team

Posted by Envel on Feb. 05 2005,04:22

do the howtos work for the latest version, say 0.9.3?

i have limited cds and such, and wanted to know.

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 05 2005,04:35

It should work just fine.

If you have limited CD's, Create a /KNOPPIX folder on the root of your remaster partition.

After you have remastered and created your new compressed image in the /newcd/KNOPPIX dir, copy the compressed KNOPPIX image to the /KNOPPIX directory on the root of the partition.

Then boot your PC with the DSL cd and type "dsl fromhd=/dev/hda1" or whatever your remaster partition is named. The kernel will find the image and boot to your remaster. A great way to test your work before creating a coaster.

Good luck!

Chris

Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 05 2005,22:38

I note than on computers with a lot of hard drives and partitions, with perhaps a few remastering projects going on, one has to give the exact location of theiso that is to be booted:For Knoppix:boot: knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hdb6/yourdistro.isoI often do that when I am trying out something, and don't want any more coasters.---Now, for the hard question:I note that in Knoppix 3.7, the mouse cursor has changed to one that can easily be seen on laptop screens. I am remastering 3.4, and the default cursor is too small.I have tried installing Debian's "big-cursor", but with limited results. Most of the time, (in Firefox, for instance), I still get the default (too-tiny) cursor. I did fix up some cursors to use with "xsetroot", and have them in my menu, but again, those only show up on the desktop, not within an application. I tried moving the cursor files themselves from 3.7 into my 3.4 master, but that only resulted in a crash on bootup of X. This question would also apply to DSL, if anyone does not like the default cursor size. In DSL 0.9.3, the cursor is just fine, really, but not quite the size of the one in Knoppix 3.7. The Knoppix distro's have KDE, which I don't boot into in my remaster, I use Icewm, and can switch to Fluxbox also, so it looks like my remaster of Damn Small, more or less, with the same style, etc. I can switch to KDE on faster computers, and have left all the KDE files there, but have made changes for my remaster. Mostly, I put a bunch of desktop icons for my stuff, and added my wallpaper. ---In Knoppix, the cursor files are in:usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc, and are:cursor.pcf.gzolcursor.pcf.gzIn the Knoppix 3.7, the cursor.pcf.gz-artwiz replaces cursor.pcf.gz---I have tried several combinations, first just placing cursor.pcf.gz-artwiz inthe directory mentioned above, and renaming the original. Nothing workedI still get either the original Knoppix (too-tiny) cursor, or a crash on bootup ofX.Perhaps the file controlling the cursor is unknown to me. ---Anyone have any thoughts on this cursor problem?--Rapidweather

Posted by ke4nt1 on Feb. 06 2005,00:07

Just a thought..

When I add the artwiz fonts to the same dir you speak of,I needed to run update-fonts-dir, to update the directory contents liststhat reside in there.. Do those lists also reflect your additions to that dir as well?

I realize that they are not fonts, but they are parked in that same area, andeffect/enhance displays in both desktops AND applications after I run this executable..

73ke4nt

Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 06 2005,01:10

I didn't do that...So, I am looking over this page, and will chroot into my build partition and fool around with this.< update-fonts-dir howto >Thanks for the tip!

Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 06 2005,02:07

From what I can tell, when I chrooted into my Build partition, and did apt-get install big-cursor, everything was taken care of by Debian. The fonts.dir file has this at the top:

The original cursor file, now left out of the fonts.dir file was renamed to:

Quote

cursor.pcf.gz-small

I had noted that when the apt-get ran, and installed "big-cursor".Now for the sticky part:Only in some areas of the desktop, windows, etc. does "big-cursor" show up. The default Knoppix cursor is everywhere, mostly in big windows like Firefox, which I run fullscreen. What is strange is that upon bootup of X11, the 'big-cursor' "X" (really big) appears briefly, then the mouse cursor is changed to the default Knoppix one (that I am trying to get rid of).Now, back to running update-fonts-dir. I tend to think that even if I got the artwiz cursor fonts placed in the directory, and made a new font.dir file, those fonts would just take the place of "big-cursor" , and not appear everywhere, any more than 'big-cursor' does now. I have remastered it with big cursor, so I am running that now, and can see what a mess I have with two groups of cursor fonts. --There is the open look sun cursor fonts, still in there, with the file name:

Quote

olcursor.pcf.gz

It is possible to change to KDE within my Knoppix remaster, and there I can actually view the contents of these font files, to see what they look like. In Fluxbox or ICEwm, the system cursor font is supposed to be viewable with:

Code Sample

xfd -fn cursor

and a box will open with all of the various cursor shapes displayed.It is obvious that I do have 'big-cursor' installed when I run that. ---So, I still have not discovered where Knoppix hides the little cursor that they have in Knoppix 3.4. It's small, white, and has a shadow. If I did find the file where it is stored, and renamed it or something, I might then not be able to get X11 to start up, if a file somewhere tries to call it. I tried using KDE to change it to a larger one, in a KDE control panel, but it won't do that. Stays the same. ---I'll get back in here if I fix this...

Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 06 2005,18:53

This turned out to be a KDE thing. I downloaded and set up my own cursors from kde-look.org, and the /home/.knoppix/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals file needs to be edited to remove the cursor theme, just remove the theme name, so it will be blank.They have setup instructions on the cursor packages at kde-look.org.---

Posted by webs05 on Feb. 11 2005,13:58

As you can probably tell already I am a noob. But my fascination with Linux is off the charts. Like many computer techies I did not know how amazing Linuz OS's have become in the last few years, and because of this I have not really payed attention to it till recently.Anyways, at work one of the guys I work with introduced me to Knoppix and I fell in love. Our idea to implement it at work is to strip it down to only running Mozilla Firefox, and use it for the "walk-up email stations" we have at various locations. These computer that it will run on will be AMD about 1.5-1.7Mhz with 256mb ram, and hopefully no hard drive. From what I have read in the forums, it seems like we will have to remaster it, which is similar to modifying the files so that it boots with the required things we want. If this is correct please let me know.Also we would want to create a user that only has access to running Mozilla. If this is feasible please let me know.I made a post with a similar message in the how to area, and someone there said that I was looking for a Remaster God. So if there is a Remaster God out there some help would be fantastic.If anyone does help me I would be very gracious and would like to thank you ahead of time. I have only started my journey with Linux this month and I realize I have a lot to learn, but a jumpstart would really help me and the guys I work with. Thank you for your time.

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 11 2005,15:19

Webs05 -

I am not a remaster 'God' but I do know how to remaster DSL so if you want to pm me I can try and help you with whatever you are trying to do. I have offered up a similar offer to my company but we are so huge and entrenched in M$ that a Linux solution is not somehitng they want to seriously consider regardless of the benefits.

Chris

Posted by webs05 on Feb. 11 2005,15:52

Thanks clivesay I have sent you a PM.

Posted by Rapidweather on Feb. 11 2005,22:58

I finally finished the cursor themes item in my Knoppix remaster. Here is the link for the Getting Started Guide for my latest build. I am able to switch between 4 different cursors, in two themes. Also, the default Knoppix cursor, in Knoppix 3.4 is not used, I have replaced it with a much larger one, suitable for laptop screens.---< http://www.geocities.com/rapidweather/getting_started.html >--- For the most part, switching cursor themes works, but in the case of Icewm, which is my default window manager, one must still close all applications (such as Firefox) and reopen them to get the new cursor theme. Details are in the guide.---I also remaster DSL, and the links in the signature are for that.---Sorry I do not have screenshots, and the distro is not available for download at this time. ---

Posted by Claus on Feb. 13 2005,22:42

Hello!

I just joined the forums and would really appreciate some viewpoints on a DSL remastering project I seem to be flubbing up.

I think it is due to a lack of experience with Linux. I'm getting pretty comfortable with this Linux LiveCD stuff, but tend to be better in the GUI realm--rather than command line.

What I would like to do is make a "Helix" style cdr--but with DSL instead. My "shop" is 100% W2K-Pro, and I have a 640MB CD-R with Windows enviroment autorun/launcher menu that I use for troubleshooting/patching/etc. on the desktop systems. I have been using a Free-DOS network-boot portion on the bootable portion of the cdr, but long filenames aren't supported on and when I recover a user's data from the tanked pc to the server, all the long filenames are clipped to short DOS names. DSL seems a beautiful partner. I can just fit it onto the 700MB cdr media. That way I can boot the pc with dsl, attach to the network, and preserve the long filenames--I've done it and it works wonderfully. I guess I could continue to just carry two cdr's but that isn't as elegant a solution as I would like. I want to merge the two.

I am using DSL 0.9.2. No problem burning the original ISO to cdr media. My burns of DSL-only work great. I am stuck trying to merge the two. I have read the forums and have tried several methods to remaster/merge both on both a W2K system & XP system (mastering off a Fat32 partition). But get the same problems. I'm not adding/modifying anything to the Linux side. 0.9.2 is fine as is. Just trying to get the Win files on the cdr at the same time.

I first tried Meo's remastering steps and got a remastered ISO.

While I copied some of the DSL files/folders to the "newcd" directory I noticed a response of "cp: failed to preserve ownership for [path/filename displayed]: operation not permitted". When I checked the new folders, however, the files were there and the sizes matched.

(Oh, none of the Windows files/folder names are the same as the DSL ones. I made sure of that.)

The compression and iso creation seemed to go without any errors. (Burning the iso in Windows but that doesn't seem to be the problem.)

I used "IsoBuster" to look at the structure. It seemed to match exactly with the plain DSL iso I downloaded except the (headers?) for Juilet/RR said CDROM instead of KNOPPIX (+ the Windows folders/files were there now as well).

Burning the iso fine, used the new one to boot. I got the root: login logo, and hit <enter>. DSL scans for usb devices, and appears to be looking for the dsl image (off the cdr). It then drops me the following error:

Again l saw the same cp: failed... errors (but files were there), it compressed and mastered the iso. I then checked the iso structure before burning and this time the Juliet/RR headers all said KNOPPIX like the original DSL iso. I thought I had success!

Structure/sizes all matched between this ISO and the original DSL iso.

Booted the system and again, got the same boot up error about not finding the KNOPPIX filesystem.

So this is where I am stuck. The "good news" is that on all the "coasters" I have made, the Windows autorun side of things works like a charm. It's just the DSL boot portion that I am flubbing up. I guess I could try to "cheat" and buy a copy of "IsoMagic" and see if I could just add the Windows files into the existing original DSL iso, but I really want to learn Linux and make it work "fair and square". Maybe Helix is using some special alchemy to do what they do, but I think it is just my lack of experience with Linux.

And those "cp: failed..." errors are nagging at me.

Anybody got some ideas/suggestions/techniques they can share?

Claus

Posted by Claus on Feb. 13 2005,22:44

Sorry for the double post--on dialup now and response said it timed out.

Claus

Posted by tronik on Feb. 14 2005,06:37

Yeah...you're going to need to remaster in something other than Windows...or if you're not using windows, what are you using to remaster?

Posted by Claus on Feb. 14 2005,14:32

All my attempts at remastering are done within DSL 0.9.2--loading off cdrom. Following meo's guide and as root: sudo su. Only thing I used Windows to do was to burn the iso itself.

Since Windows burned the original dsl iso I had downloaded and it runs just fine, I didn't think that the iso burn to cdr enviroment mattered at all.

Don't have enough RAM (512) to try a RAM-Remaster.

I haven't tried using an earlier/later version of dsl to see if that makes a diff, but I would expect 0.9.2 is ok since it was created ok in the first place.

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 14 2005,14:37

Claus -

I know that an error while copying is not good. I would make sure you are typing the commands correctly and also, make sure you are remastering on an ext2 partition. If you are trying to remaster on an a fat32, that is most likely your issue.

Chris

Posted by Claus on Feb. 15 2005,14:18

thanks clivesay--

Before you posted, I tried using the Overclockix LiveCd to boot. I then tried to remaster in that distro and didn't see any copy errors at all this time, seemed to go smooth (careful to use the DSL KNOPPIX version file). However, ended up with same errors again. You may be on the right track. Something could be getting lost on the fat32 partition. It never occurred to me that the remaster-er's are actually running DSL off a HDD install and not just from the livecd.

I'm going to hunt up a old box and try a hdd install to make sure that the partition is better.

I'll let you know how it turns out!

I appreciate your help.

Claus

Posted by henk.1955 on Feb. 15 2005,15:17

i think you can NOT remaster on a fat or vfat partition.because you can not copy symbolic links to the vfat and some file mode bits a lost.if vfat is the only type of partition you have, you could try to make a lagre loopfs file, format the loopfils ext2, mount it and use the loopfs to remaster..

Posted by Claus on Feb. 16 2005,20:22

henk.1955 and clivesay

I dropped DSL on that hdd and went through the remaster steps again.

Worked like a charm! Good DSL boot up now as a bootcd, and when I pop the cd in an active Windows session, my autorun app comes up and all the Win files/apps are available.

I really appreciate your tips! Got the remaster bug bad now!

Claus

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 17 2005,02:56

Great! Yeah, once you get it down, you start thinking of all kinds of things to do!

Chris

Posted by meo on Feb. 27 2005,21:29

Well just thought I wold drop a line!

The ram-remastering of the 0.9.3 works like a charm and I only have 256 MB of RAM. Since I can't get hold of any 50 mb cd-r's I now remaster DSL and use it on a USB-drive. DSL is truly a versatile and nice distro.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by softgun on Mar. 05 2005,20:30

Quote (meo @ Jan. 06 2005,16:01)

Hi again everybody!Just a quick post telling that it works fine to remaster the 0.9.2 version of DSL just in RAM. Here it comes:

DSL RAM-Remaster HOWTO

Change the keyboard-layout (unless you have a us keyboard)$sudo loadkeys se-latin1 (I have a swedish keyboard)$startx

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

One thing that I discovered when thinking of remastering the embedded DSL, is that it's possible just to delete the original knoppix-file from the usb-drive (where you unzipped the DSL-embedded file) and replace it with your own remastered one (for example done the way described above) and it works just fine. Then you have a remastered embedded usb instantly. Not to bad, or what?

Keep having fun with remastering this wonderfully versatile distro,meo

Meo,

What about doing an apt-get of programs and then making an iso? Is this possible too? Maybe too much to do just in RAM?

Posted by tronik on Mar. 05 2005,22:46

Anything you put in source/ is going to go into the KNOPPIX image..

Anything you put into newcd/ is going to go into the ISO image...

So...you can theoretically put whatever you want, wherever you want...I'm not sure what kind of question you're asking meo about using apt-get...

Posted by softgun on Mar. 06 2005,02:56

In remastering Knoppix, we used to mount the iso and then apt-get the programs we wanted, remove those we do not and then remake the new ISO.This is why I asked.I have been struggling to create a postgresql dsl and failed to get a working version so far :-(Therfore I was thinking of a remastering solution!!

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 06 2005,07:26

It should work fine.

Just make sure to download the dsl dpkg ad the gnu utils extensions and install them before you try using apt-get

Of course the down side is that your new cd will be larger because it will contain the dpkg and gnu programfiles.

Posted by meo on Mar. 08 2005,18:26

Just a quick note again!

It works just fine to do a RAM-Remaster with the new 1.0rc1 DSL. I just did it and the distro keeps improving. Unfortunately I'm short of possibilities to offer help when it comes to remastering right now (I have to give higher priority to other things) but hopefully I'll be back with constructive answers and suggestions in the future.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by Mariusz_from_Poland on Mar. 08 2005,19:11

You should write something about remastering with adding new languages. For example, how I can add Polish. I need everything in Polish. In my opinion, it is interesting for many people, who need DSL in their language.

Posted by meo on Mar. 11 2005,15:09

Well Mariusz_from_Poland!

I really think that changing the language in DSL goes way beyond just doing a remaster. My guess is that it has to be done from scratch in the language you want.

Have fun anyway,meo

Posted by chaostic on Mar. 16 2005,07:38

Running 1.0rc1. Just a question. Is the index.html and lost+found file and directory neccesary? I would edit the .xintrc file to stop the index.html file from being launched to not create a problem, but what about the lost+found directory?

Also, just to clarify, what are the steps for including an file/dsl into the system when booting off ram? Do I need to mydsl-load the dsl, or do I need to open the tar.gz or dsl, and manually copy the files into the appropriate folder inside the newcd/source/ directory where I copied the knoppix files into?

Finally, what original file inside the knoppix files starts the wm apps in the slit?

Posted by meo on Mar. 24 2005,21:32

Mariusz_from_Poland!

I have to rectify my note a while ago. Henrique has made a brazilian language-pack which you can find in the mydsl-repository under system. He should know how to make a language-pack (in polish too). Perhaps someone else has the knowledge and want to share it here in this thread.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by meo on Mar. 27 2005,20:10

Just a quick note!To me it seems that DSL1.0rc2 just is a release where the team has squashed some bugs and I haven't found any big changes so I won't make a remaster of this release (at least not commenting it in this thread). Best wishes to the bug-squashing-team though. Now the keyboard-layout can be changed as supposed as a final step of booting. That's the way to go! Keep up the good work!

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1 (Here I have my favourite cd-burning program)

It is true that the "backgrounds" directory doesn't exist at the start but doing like this it will be a part of the final compressed image. I followed this procedure last night and I am posting this from the result of that ramaster.

When it comes to using apt-get that is a totally different story. I wrote a HOWTO at the beginning of this thread. It can be found at the first page most probably. I hope that can help you out. Speaking about myself I only do smaller remasters, say up to 210 MB (including an optional directory), so needless to say I don't do my remasters using apt-get. Hope these words are of any use to you.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by dslremaster on April 23 2005,06:30

Thank you for replying.

I gave it a try today. And just to make sure I was following the howto correctly, I did it twice. And failed twice.

When I boot the remastered. It would stop at the screen where Tux is located on the top-left corner. And I would get this message in red:

Also, I noticed my remastered was about 10MB smaller. I didn't remove anything. I added a PNG wallpaper and Fluxbox style, which takes up about 1MB.

Posted by meo on April 23 2005,09:15

dslremaster!

I would think that you don't have any swap-partition on your harddrive or that it is too small (least probable). On my system I have 256 MB of RAM which is necessary. I also have 1 GB of swap. I don't think that you need that much but a swap-partition is needed. Hope this helps you out!

Have fun,meo

Posted by dslremaster on April 23 2005,13:07

I have 256 RAM and over 100 swap. I didn't think DSL would require swap.

DSL was meant to be a portable distro that can boot on any box. Window boxes don't have swap. So how is it suppose to be a live-cd?

Posted by meo on April 23 2005,13:19

dslremaster!

It is only when making a remaster that a swap-partition is needed. Just using it like surfing the web, office work and stuff like that doesn't need a swap-partition. But remastering does though.

Keep on having fun,meo

Posted by dslremaster on April 23 2005,13:24

So you saying that my remaster failed because I didn't have enough swap?

But if I had enough swap, my remaster will be successful. And after that, I no longer need the swap?

Posted by rja on April 23 2005,16:59

The Remastering HOWTO doesn't mention which type of filesystem to mount. Could this make a difference?

Does it work with vfat or fat filesystems?

Posted by meo on April 23 2005,17:25

dslremaster and rja.

Yes I think you need a bigger swap-file to make a sucessfull remaster and you don't need it anymore after that, although it is good to have some swap if you can spare room for it. I didn't have any swap-partition on my computer until the other night when I was going to make the remaster in question. I have been working with movies and all space I had was needed for a while. Nevertheless I have been using DSL everyday even without swap and haven't had any problem in the daily use. To be honest I just recently discovered that a swap-partition is indeed needed to make a remaster. I have had just the same results that you described with the compressed file being smaller than it should etc. So a temporarily bigger swap-partition would most probably make your remaster a successful one.

Now rja when it comes to filesystems we are now talking of making a reamster totally in the RAM-memory (with a swap-partition) and not on a harddrive. If you want to make a remaster on the harddrive you should use ext2-filesystem. If you go back a little in this thread you will find a HOWTO describing the process. OK, that's all for now!

Have fun with this remarcably interesting distro,meo

P.S. When I feel up to it and have the possibility I might go a little further into the matter D.S.

Posted by dslremaster on April 25 2005,07:06

I just tried again with over 1GB of swap. And still failed.

I didn't type in anything wrong because I copy-and-pasted all the lines into Terminal from your howto.

But I am still getting that red message. Can you please tell me what I did wrong?

Posted by meo on April 25 2005,09:19

dslremaster!

Your problem really puzzels me. The only thing that I can say right of the bat is that maybe you didn't delete the source directory before making the final iso-image. That is a must do if you have only 256 MB of RAM. Hopefully that's the problem.

Have fun out there everybody,meo

Posted by dslremaster on April 25 2005,15:55

That is what I did. I only have 256 RAM.

Any other thoughts?

Posted by meo on April 25 2005,19:17

dslremaster!

Another probability would be that your swap-file not is properly formatted. Some partition-programs does like that. They just label the swap without formatting it. Otherwise I just don't know what could be wrong. Hopefully this solves the problem. If it doesn't i need more into to see what it can be.

Have fun,meo

Posted by Rifey on April 26 2005,03:40

Forgive me for my English. Please, prompt as it is possible to keep completely adjustments of system. That is to adjust Ftp-server, monkey-webserver, and other services. Has for example tried to make remastering of clauses: HOWTO Remaster DSL From An Existing Hard Drive Installation, HOWTO Remaster DSL From An Existing HD Install, Remastering DSL, ReMastering HOWTO for DSL - and any of these descriptions has not helped, namely my order of actions:1. Booting from CD-Live with parameter: dsl toram2. Setting xvesa resolution, static IP adress, starting daemons webserver, ftpserver, and other.#sudo su#mount-rw/dev/hda1/mnt/hda1#mount/dev/hda1 on/mnt/hda1 type vfat (rw)#mkdir/mnt/hda1/dsl#mkdir-p/mnt/hda1/dsl/master/KNOPPIX #mkdir-p/mnt/hda1/dsl/source/KNOPPIX *cp-Rp/KNOPPIX/* /mnt/hda1/dsl/source/KNOPPIXGives out many mistakes, for example: cp: cannot create special file '/mnt/hda1/dsl/source/KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c1d6p1 ': Opperation not permitted

That I do not so??? Rescue!!!

P.S.It will be a server a redirector log files + ftp download

Posted by meo on April 26 2005,13:21

Rifey!

I'm not sure that I understand your problem but I would recommend that you make a partition with ext2 filesystem and a swap-partition and try making your remaster. I'll give you and example-HOWTO here:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp /mnt/hda3/mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

I hope this can be of help!

Have fun Y'all out there in cyberspace,meo

(Edited 2005-05-04)

Posted by Rifey on April 27 2005,04:01

Thansk Meo!

The problem was in that for remastering need use ext2 file system. In my question < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=5650 > , henk.1955 (thanks!) has explained me. Therefore to not convert partition I have use:

If unpack minirt24.gz and mount minirt24, in directory /etc/init contains:------------------# linuxrc will configure the ramdisk system, anc then copy a static# init from CD to ramdisk, after finishing the autoconfiguration./linuxrc

Can you please decipher the above so I can get a better understanding?

Posted by Rapidweather on April 28 2005,02:06

Just a side note here. When you determine the correct remastering command lines that suit your situuation, be sure and write a step by step and save it in your remaster. That way, when you use your remaster to make another, you can copy and paste the command lines in a terminal and make the process easier, and more accurate. I know a lot of you stay up late working on remasters, and can benefit from a nice copy and paste setup. I myself have a sub directory called "keepers", where I put the file "remaster_command" (just a name) that has what I use. I do put the lines on cards, but that is a lot of work to copy them each time.

Posted by meo on April 28 2005,13:32

dslremaster!

I have used this way of remastering with all the latest releases of DSL including 1.0.1. If you do a backtrack in this thread you will find a point where there was a change in making the final iso-file. I got help from somebody (don't remember who) and I really can't explain that much about it. Just the obvious about how it works. Hope things work out for you!

OK have fun Y'all out there,meo

Posted by clivesay on April 28 2005,14:00

I normally don't like to post links from other forums to here but maybe this is a good time to do it. I have been remastering the filesystems of Feather and DSL for about a year. I started with Feather but now do all my remastering in DSL. Below I have posted a remastering howto I put together in the Feather forum. I put this together early in my remastering learning curve so I am sure it can be simplified from what I did. At that time I wasn't as comfortable with the shell as I am now so I did everything from X. Keep in mind that you can also just go to the Knoppix site and use their remastering howto for Knoppix 3.4 for changing the base filesystem.

I hope this helps you.

BTW - Listen to RapidWeather concerning the commands. It is very easy to make a typo in the mkisofs commands. I created little bash scripts for compression and iso creation so I wouldn't have to type them all the time.

< My Remaster Howto >

Posted by dslremaster on April 28 2005,20:21

Thanks.

I did not make any typos. I use copy & paste. So unless the howto had mistakes, I could not have made one. I have tried 4 or 5 times now.

Posted by dslremaster on April 28 2005,20:23

I just scrolled through the howto. It is much longer than the one here! How is that a 'simplified'?

Posted by dslremaster on April 28 2005,21:08

Also, I always get a successful burn by means of it fully burnt. But when verifying the data, I get this:

Quote

error while reading from file

What does this mean?

Posted by clivesay on April 28 2005,22:08

dslremaster -

You are talking apples and oranges. The remaster listed here is for simple additions to the CD. The remaster I linked you to is for modifying the filesystem as I mentioned before. Maybe you should package your changes into a mydsl tar.gz and use the mkmydsl script to create a new CD.

There are many options

Chris

BTW - I never claimed that it was simplified. I said it was a simple mind.

Posted by dslremaster on April 29 2005,23:10

A simple addition is what I am doing! I am just adding wallpapers, styles and songs into the distro.

It's just not working. I didn't make any typos. The filesystem is ext2. I have 256MB RAM + 1GB swap.

Posted by Jason on April 30 2005,17:33

Thanks everyone for a great (albiet, long) thread about DSL remastering.I was also having the same deal with the 'knoppix file system not found' message, been reading around here a little bit, and read something about not being able to compile the file system on a FAT32 HD.So, does this mean if I only have 128 MB RAM and only one HD partition (and that has window$ on it) that I won't be able to add anything to DSL unless I want it to run off the HD?

You have the possibility to make a remaster off a zip-drive or a usb-drive. I have done it. If you look a little further in this thread you will find that. But I think though that you must have a swap-partition to make it work.

lala!

Yes everything in the quote should be on one line. The break is there just because the whole command won't fit on one line.

There seems to be a "-" ,missing between the "create_compressed_fs" and "65536" entries.

That was just a typo right? Didn't see any correction after that post and all your previous remaster howto's seem to have it in there.

Been making updated Windows-side "autoplay" menu / DSL side boot cd remasters. Going just fine. I like to add in GFTP instead of the original ftp program included. Seems to work better on our network for logins and server filestructure display as well as the usual background image tweaks and a customized verision of the html file that Dillo displays at desktop.

Appreciate all the work you are putting in! You are doing a wonderful job keeping us learning and using DSL.

-Claus

Posted by Claus on May 02 2005,17:34

Correction...

Quote

I noticed that on your post on page 32 (April 26,2005 9:21)

on page 31.

-Claus

Posted by Rifey on May 03 2005,09:39

Whether and in general it is possible to create a script that it was possible to choose what adjustments to keep and make remastering. (network, setting of daemons). IMXO it would be much easier for beginning users who want will get acquainted with Linux. In one CD-Live the distribution kit I did not meet it, that all was simply and clearly.To that anybody to me has not helped to understand: < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;st=155 >

Posted by meo on May 03 2005,10:15

Rifey!

I'm sorry I can't help you one this one. I hope somebody else can.

Have fun anyway,meo

Posted by Rifey on May 03 2005,10:41

In general at me now on work such task: to create a disk-less server. Failure-safe and with low cost. That is as operational system, Linux has been chosen certainly. Requirements to system:

FTP server - some files which will be sometimes updated from one of servers of the Internet will lay, and further client machines will be download and to put it to themselves.

A router a log files - through it on cluster will be redirect a logs. Once again I shall repeat, what in Linux I the beginner though already half a year I use as a workstation Linux Mandrake 10.0

Can be someone will prompt how-to on creation disk-less servers from zero?

Yours faithfully Rifey.

Posted by meo on May 03 2005,11:41

Claus!

You are quite right it was just a typo, it should be a - before 65536 etc. I'm sorry! But now it is all straightened up OK.

Have fun everyone out there in cyberspace,meo

Posted by Jason on May 05 2005,05:03

Thanks for the suggestions, Meo, however I have a very simple setup... just a HD and a CD-ROM drive... OK, floppy as well, but not that much use for them when it comes to remastering, though.I must not have read the forums too thoroughly, though, I think I found an answer here:< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=5650 >As for the rest of the instructions, thanks again for putting them all in one place, Meo. It would've worked, except I also got the 'no Knoppix OS found' message since I was using my FAT32 formatted HD (talked about on the other thread I link to above). Fortunatley I was using a CD-RW

Posted by meo on May 05 2005,11:06

Hello everybody!

I just made a remaster of DSL 1.1 and all went well. Here I post the HOWTO (without typos I hope!?):

DSL RAM-Remaster HOWTO

Mount the partition where you have stored the files you want to add

#mount -rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 (Here I have stored files I want to add)

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1 (Here I have my favourite cd-burning program)

OK that's all for now, have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by Egroc on May 05 2005,14:24

Hi!, I'm trying to remaster the DSL Linux 1.0.1 and I reading de HOWTO but 'isolinux/isolinux.bin' insn't in my DSL system. The /cdrom folder in root folder don't have anything, I heve to mount cd-filesystem in it?

What's wrong? There are a 1.1 version? Where?

Thanks

Posted by Egroc on May 05 2005,15:03

Sorry, I was testing de dsl-1.0.1-syslinux I now go try 1.1 but, what is syslinux?

Posted by meo on May 08 2005,12:43

Egroc!

"Robert put together a SysLinux version of 0.9.1. You folks who have older hardware which isn't compatible with IsoLinux can now boot the latest version of DSL from a CD like everyone else."

This is a quote from notes-section on the DSL-website explaining your question.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on May 10 2005,11:15

Hi all you remastering fans!

I just thought I would post a HOWTO on probably the easiest way to ramaster. I felt compelled to come up with something since the last version of dsl-embedded has a feature that I want. Usually I just make a remaster of DSL and switch the original KNOPPIX-file for my own remastered one and suddenly I have a remastered dsl-embedded. But since this particuar feature mentioned abowe just can be found in the most rescent of version 1.1 of dsl-embedded (dated the sixth this month). I had to find another way. So here it comes:

DSL-Embedded Ram-Remaster

Boot from cd: dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1 qemu frugal xsetup( I have to do like this since my bios doesn't support booting from usb)

Copy the remastered KNOPPIX-file to a place where you want it. Then all you have to do is to swap it for the original. This will work as a remaster anyway you choose to use it. As embedded in windows or whatever.

I have an Embedded-dir on hda1 to where I unzip dsl-embedded first. Then I just delete the original KNOPPIX-file and making the remaster above I copy the remastered KNOPPIX-file directly to this directory. All I have to do then is to copy everything to a newly formatted usb-drive and I'm good to go with my newly remastered dsl-embedded anyway I want to use it.

meo and clivesay both posted excellent tips about either dropping the remastered KNOPPIX-dsl file onto the pendrive or directing a dsl-boot to the new KNOPPIX file for testing.

In our wk2 shop, I have a dedicated pc with DSL installed for remastering purposes, and the w2k pc for daily work. In my steps to learn dsl-remastering, I created quite a few coasters due to flubbing up the KNOPPIX file remastering.

I kept a copy of the dsl-embedded version installed on my w2k pc to check out the latest rc versions. Now in light of what meo and clivesay had pointed out, I wondered what would happen if I just replaced the KNOPPIX file in the Qemu-embedded version on my w2k pc with the remasted KNOPPIX file. Guess what? It worked!

Now I have a quick and easy way to test the KNOPPIX remasters, as well as demo the "production" verisons to staff without having to live-dsl boot a pc/laptop. I am also able to keep my latest "production" version of dsl-remaster with me, so if I get a call from field-techs about something they want to do on the "release" version, I can bring it up quickly and walk them through it with them.

I realize that prob. most readers don't worry about w2k enviroments, but just in case, thought this could be a helpful alternative to testing remasted KNOPPIX files....Using the 0.6.1 version of Qemu right now but will be trying the newer one very soon and don't see why it shouldn't work the same way.

Hope this comes in helpful to others. Everyone has been very helpful in teaching me the Art of dsl remastering!

--Claus

Posted by meo on May 22 2005,16:58

Hello Y'all remastering fans!

I was looking around in the forum and I saw a question about HOWTO make something like an Mydsl-Opt DSL-remaster. I thought I had posted it before but backtracking in this thread I couldn't find it. At least not one that would work with the newer versions of DSL. So here I post it:

Reboot and burn the cd and you are good to go with your brand new remaster

I hope this is of any use to someone.

Have fun,meo

Posted by Heinrich on May 31 2005,13:21

i have these errors after boot of my dsl 1.1 remaster:----------apm: overridden by ACPI.insmod: /lib/modules/arch/i386/kernel/apm.o: .init_module: No such deviceinsmod: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parametersYou may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesginsmod: /lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/apm.o: insmod char-major-10-134 failed----------X quits very fast nothing elseif i try startx again it happens the same..pls help

your heinrich

Posted by cbagger01 on June 01 2005,02:57

Try booting with the:

dsl noapm

command

Posted by shui on June 06 2005,21:19

whenever as root I try to mke2fs /dev/hda3, it tells me my filesystem is invalid because it has a size of zero, or it's currently in use?I'd copy the text here, but I wasn't able to paste into the writer.

Posted by Guest on June 07 2005,03:27

shui,

Are you sure you want to "mke2fs /dev/hda3"? Because from this error message I can guess that either you are currently using the /dev/hda3 and may have some important stuff inside it (currently in use), or your computer does not actually have a /dev/hda3 (zero bytes). Please remember that the device designations used in meo's remastering procedures are just examples.

If you want to know what devices you have, open an XTerminal and type "cat /etc/fstab". Pick a device from this list.

If you want to know what devices are currently in use (mounted), type "mount".

If you want to browse the contents of the device, make sure it is currently in use (mounted). If not mounted, type "mount /dev/hda3" (example only, assuming you have this in /etc/fstab) to mount /dev/hda3. Now type "mount" again to see where it is mounted at (for example, /mnt/hda3). Then either use emelfm or type "ls /mnt/hda3" to see its contents.

If you want to make the device "not in use", type "umount /dev/hda3" (again, example only). But before this, make sure that you have no programs that are using any files on that device, and that your current working directory is not inside that device.

Posted by Shui on June 09 2005,15:03

Quote (meo @ May 22 2005,12:58)

Format the partition with the ext2 filesystem

Ok, when I use cat /ext/fstab, I don't see anything with ext2. I see hdc1 and hdc2, but they're both ext3. What should I use?

Posted by Guest on June 09 2005,16:39

The ext2 and ext3 filesystems may be different, but this should not matter for what you are trying to do. This means you can skip the "mke2fs" step and use either hdc1 or hdc2.

If you REALLY want to do the "mke2fs" step, be sure that you do not need the things inside the partition you will do this to. The contents of that partition will be gone forever. On the other hand, many processes benefit from a freshly-formatted partition because the files are not fragmented, allowing for a faster remaster.

This is HARD! I have 15 years experience as a MS technician, but reconfig dsl is giving me a brain tumor Probably I have too many preconceived notions of what should happen.

I managed to download and install dsl to hda1 and have even created a dialup connection, installed firefox, all within a few days of seeing it.

But putting it back onto a cd....

I won't give up though. I never thought before that you could surf the net without any virus issues at all!!!!

Posted by clacker on June 18 2005,13:56

silicon_intelligence, it's not a tumor.

Try looking at these other posts on < remastering from a HD install > by noclobber. Also try the search button to look for post similar to what your looking for.

Good luck

Posted by meo on June 21 2005,11:20

Hi silicon_intelligence!

Remastering is not as hard as it might seem. I suggest you look at page 37 in this thread to see how you can put any extensions you want on a cd together with DSL. After that you can use them as you see fit. If any questions arises just get back to this thread!

Have fun remastering this incredible distro (DSL),meo

Posted by shui on June 25 2005,14:40

Ok, I'm just starting to figure this all out. When you say $sudo mke2fs /dev/hda3 to format a new partition, is there any reason you can't just make the directories on an old partition?

Reboot and burn the cd and you are good to go with your brand new remaster

This is where the actual .iso file is made, which is the part I can't do in windows. Could I do all the previous steps in windows, then load DSL, mount hda1, and do these steps?

Posted by meo on June 26 2005,13:41

Hello shui!

The problem is that a remastering won't work on a windows partition because of ownership problems with some of the files. The ownership or files belonging to root (the superuser) can't be preserved on a windows partition. If you had Linux installed and used one of the partitions awailable your idea might have worked.

Have fun,meo

Posted by shui on June 26 2005,13:45

Quote (shui @ June 25 2005,10:40)

Ok, I'm just starting to figure this all out. When you say $sudo mke2fs /dev/hda3 to format a new partition, is there any reason you can't just make the directories on an old partition?

What should I be getting out of these folders? Will I have these folders on my windows hard drive? Can I skip this step?

Ok, how about these?

Posted by shui on June 30 2005,00:29

Anyone?

Posted by shui on July 02 2005,12:28

Because I asked someone who knows Linux better than I do, and they suggested I make the directories on an old partition rather than formatting a new one just for this.The other parts talk about stuff I don't think I have on my hard drive. I'm wondering if I have to put it there, or I'll have it on a Linux hard drive, or what.

Posted by meo on July 03 2005,19:41

Hi again shui!

Well I thought I had answered your questions in my last post. I'll try to be a little more precise and explicit this time. You can't use a part of a windows partition (let's say like something C in the windows system) for reasons I mentioned in my last post. If you are going to make a bigger remaster like 200 MB or more you will need a linux partition on your harddrive and also what is called a swap partition. If your harddrive doesn't have this it will not be possible to make the remaster you want. If you have a harddrive that is big enough you can quite easily make the required partitions. So in my HOWTO I use hda3 as an example from my own setup. The part about backgrounds and styles is just what it says, different backgrounds and styles I like and want to use in DSL as I have in other distributions of linux before, like slackware etc. So it is nothing really needed. That's just what I like to have on my remaster. If something still isn't clear to you just post a question in this thread and I'll see what I can do. Depending on my circumstances it might pass a couple of days before I can answer. But if I can I will.

Have fun,meo

Posted by Kayvan on July 04 2005,01:45

Has anyone gotten a remastered D.S.L. to work as a PXE boot/Kickstart server? I am interested in setting up something that can work that way (requires a working dhcp server, tftpd and apache server to serve up the RPMs to be installed). Does anyone have ideas about how to approach this?

Posted by mark_internet on July 09 2005,20:51

I also did a remaster using a usb drive.I had an external usb drive case,and installed a 40gig hard drive in it.It worked great.

Posted by meo on July 13 2005,22:16

Hi again!

That was nice to hear mark_internet! The methods of remastering DSL is aumenting. I just did a remaster of DSL 1.3 and I thought I had posted this procedure before but I did a backtrack a few weeks ago and I couldn't find it. Since it is very easy and I've done it the last months using DSL-embedded I thought I'd share it with Y'all so here it comes. Get your DSL-embedded up and running and then do the following:

Mount the partition containing what you want to add#mount -rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

Create the directories needed#mkdir source newcd newcd/KNOPPIX

Copy the sources to the right directory#cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source#cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/.bash_profile source

Copy the things you want to add to the source directory(I usually just add some styles and backgrounds I want to have)#cp -Rp /mnt/hda1/backgrounds source/etc/skel/.fluxbox#cp -Rp /mnt/hda1/styles/* source/usr/share/fluxbox/styles

Copy the KNOPPIX file found in the newcd directory to where you want it. All you have to do then is to replace the original KNOPPIX file with your own custom made. This way there is no need to make an iso-file and burn it etc. So I guess it's the easiest way of making a remaster manually. Hope this is of any help to someone!

Have fun,meo

(Edited 2005-07-21)

Posted by marc_island on July 18 2005,18:50

This is great for adding individual files . . . Is it similar if you want to add packages?

I'm dying to add g++ and the QT libraries to DSL to make a portable development suite usb key runnable through qemu

so there's the gcc.dsl file, and qt i think i have to get through synaptic

Any tips on how to add those in?

Posted by meo on July 21 2005,19:23

Sincere apoligies to all remastering-fans!

I made some typos and mistakes when I posted the DSL-Embedded remaster HOWTO a while ago. The errors have been corrected and should work without troubles now. I discovered them making a remaster of DSL 1.3.1 today.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by meo on Aug. 04 2005,13:51

Hi Y'all!

Just a quick note after finally finding this thread (The whole HOWTO section was removed to Other Help Topics for some reason). I made a DSL-Embedded remaster a couple of days ago and it went well. I'm planning to make an apt-get remaster HOWTO but I need some time to get things straight.

Have fun,meo

Posted by hliguori on Aug. 05 2005,18:52

Quote (meo @ Aug. 04 2005,09:51)

Hi Y'all!

Just a quick note after finally finding this thread (The whole HOWTO section was removed to Other Help Topics for some reason). I made a DSL-Embedded remaster a couple of days ago and it went well. I'm planning to make an apt-get remaster HOWTO but I need some time to get things straight.

Have fun,meo

Hello all...

i'm a noob in DSL, but i need install gnumeric, abiword and opera in the system and remaster this, making a .iso file to install DSL with this 3 programs... can someone make step by step what i need do?

Posted by meo on Aug. 10 2005,08:19

Hi hliguori!

There are dsl extensions of all the programs you mention. So just follow the Remaster HOWTO on page 37 in this thread. Put all the programs you want to have on the cd in a directory named optional and copy it to newcd as said in the Remaster HOWTO. The gnumeric is still in the testing area though. Hope all works out well.

Have fun,meo

Posted by Syl on Aug. 11 2005,09:43

Hi!I'm trying to remaster DSL 1.3.1 and I was wondering if one of these howto's that you've been posted on these pages work if I want to change the kernel in my remastered copy of DSL... Please tell me what howto I must use in order to remaster my DSL with a custom kernel !Thank you in advance!

// laterI must say that I've tryed to remaster DSL for 7 times now, following many howto's and it still doesn't work. It stops with a kernel panic: unable to mount root fs...

Posted by meo on Aug. 11 2005,21:45

Hi Syl!

Tronic has made some coustom remasters with other kernels. Here is the link to the webpage <http://dslmirror/vectori.net>.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on Sep. 13 2005,06:25

Hello remater fans!

Just a quick note about the last release. I made a remaster just a few hours after it's release and it worked like a charm. So keeo on remastering!

Have fun,meo

Posted by casio on Sep. 16 2005,10:13

Sorry if I am repeating a question already asked its just that this thread is a tad long .

I have set up DSL in RAM at the moment and have downloaded packages that I need to run uucp. However from the remastering thread it looks as through the areas that are copied do not included the directories that these packages go to for example uucp creates a folder under /etc log files under /var and will install binaries under one of the bin folders.

Please help on how I can achieve this. Also I need to make sure that the X resolution will also work as I will be running these on TFT screens and to get this working at the moment I am having to type dsl vga=788 as I will get a Sync error from the TFT screen relating to resolution 1280x1024.

{edited} - I have tried to follow the re-install ap-get remastering and after editing /etc/apt/sources.list as advised I cannot download postfix or sendmail , I need one of these for uucp to install

Regards

Casio

Posted by casio on Sep. 18 2005,08:23

Ignore my previous post as I think I understand that if a program is to be included in the remastered CD then its directories etc are copied to the source dir.

However I have tried 2 methods of remastering but I have had problems with both .One is the mydsl option on the menu and the other is the one listed here on page 11 as I have the latest DSL.

Forget the MyDSl for now as I think I know why, however using this guide I did as it suggested and then found all areas for postfix and uucp copied these to the source dir but on boot up I got a problem when I chose to run toram. It errored reporting a missing filesystem.

Any ideas?

Regards

Casio

Posted by meo on Oct. 16 2005,18:27

Hello guys!

Sorry I can't help you casio but perhaps someone else can and will. I just wanted to drop a line mentioning that I have made a remaster of DSL-Embedded 2.0RC1 and it works just fine. The only problem I ran in to was that I had to make a new backup tar-ball from scratch. It took a while but now it works just fine.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 15 2005,09:56

Hello all remastering-fans!

Just want to mention that I have made a remaster of DSL 2.0 RC2 that I'm using right now and I really want to give my regards to the guys working along with this incredible distro!!!

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 23 2005,08:31

Hello again!

I just made a remaster of the real thing, DSL 2.0, and it works like a charm. Unfortunately I don't have time to experiment with a apt-get remaster, so if anyone feels inclined to help out in this it would be very appreciated.

Have fun,meo

Posted by casio on Nov. 23 2005,10:10

Hi , as this thread is based on remastering, I need help with remastering the embedded system. The way I need to run this is either via Windows on an NTFS drive or on my 128mb thumb drive. I have copied the embedded files onto the thumb drive and the system runs fine.

As I have done (and now almost cracked this thanks to clacker) a remaster for a CD, I copied the KNOPPIX image into the folder on the thumb drive from the CD remaster. It booted most of the stuff up but didnt run the bootlocal.sh (in particular the links to ram via mkwriteable) . Also I wish not to format the thumb drive to extfs as I need it in vfat for other uses. Is this at all possible. Also how do I (I possible) set it toram in this set up.

Posted by meo on Jan. 07 2006,09:49

Remastering without making a ramaster!

I just came to think of a way of getting what I want (some extra styles and backgrounds) without having to make a real ramster. I have just added my backgrounds to /home/dsl/.fluxbox/styles and my styles to /home/dsl/.fluxbox/styles then adding them to the filetool.lst and making a backup. Just remember to add filetool.lst to filetool.lst too before otherwise it will be gone upon reboot.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on Jan. 24 2006,18:55

Hi Y'all!

Just a thing I discovered about my last comment. If you have done a backup file according to this comment it will also work with a frugal install on the harddrive. And whoops you have all your favourite styles and backgrounds even if you make a fresh frugal install.

Have fun,meo

Posted by dstude on Feb. 02 2006,20:03

Been looking about the forums and tinkering with DSL (2.1) lately, as I'd like to accomplish the following:

Remaster a DSL image that will serve as an "unattended" server located far, far away from me. I want it so that someone can put one of my premade CDs in the drive and away it goes. I'll have benefit of an available hard drive to store a "cache" copy to boot, but my goal is to make it so that this drive isn't at all necessary to boot and run.

Here's the fun part.

Due to interesting software requirements - python, asterisk, gcc and probably more - I would like to be able to get gcc on there (probably self-compiled) and then all the dependencies downwind of that so that I can compile this all, myself.

Due to the fact that there's no compiler by default in DSL, I've thought up the following way to do this:

I'll remaster a DSL CD with all necessary sources and the myDSL extension that has GCC and make and so on. I will then modify the startup scripts to compile everything, then configure everything.

Much easier said than done, and I'm kind of at a loss as to how I'll create this "cache" copy (and make it so that I don't need to recompile upon EVERY boot).

So, if anyone has any thoughts about this strategy and could fill in the blanks, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks,

Dave

Posted by clacker on Feb. 02 2006,20:31

I'm not sure what you are asking. Are you asking how to compile gcc itself so that it's optimized for the processor on the machine it is running on? Or is it that you want gcc and python in the remaster? If it's just gcc and python in the remaster, that's easy:

After you create the source/KNOPPIX directory in meo's remastering procedure, you can use the chroot command to change the root directory to source/KNOPPIX. Then you can install whatever dsl packages you want from the repository. If you run apt-get you can load whatever you want from Debian. Python, gcc, g++, make, and all the rest. As long as you are in the chroot, everything gets installed to your remaster. End the choot with an exit command. Then run the mkisofs commands and the rest to finish.

I find that it's easiest to copy my *.dsl/*.tar.gz packages to the source/KNOPPIX/home/dsl directory and do the following:

sudo suchroot source/KNOPPIXcd /home/dslsu dsl## because mydsl-load must not be run as rootmydsl-load dsl-dpkg.dsl## add any others here, like mydsl-load gnu-utils.dslexitapt-get updateapt-get install gcc gpp make pythonapt-get clean## to remove the *.deb files you don't need anymoreexit

Then remove the dsl packages in the source/KNOPPIX/home/dsl directory.

Posted by plinej on Feb. 10 2006,04:20

I made a flua script remastering tool thanks to this thread. Just copy the text between the lines and save as "remaster-flua". Make it executable by opening a shell, changing to the directory you saved the file to, and then type "chmod a+x remaster-flua". Then you can run it from executing it in emelfm as super user or from a root shell. You can't run this as user dsl. Click on the getting started button for help.

-- HELP WINDOWw_help = Window{ww,wh, "help window"}w_help_text = Box{10,180,0,10,"\n".."\n".."Thanks goes to meo's remastering help threads in the forum, and\n".."also to Mikshaw's flua_reference.uci to help make this.\n".."\n".."created by plinej on 2006-02-09\n".."\n".."First of all check out the thread in the forums at:\n".."http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/\n".."ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=12;t=7177;st=0\n".."\n".."To get started you'll need to be booted up in DSL with your\n".."live cd in the cdrom. You will also need a partition to do\n".."your work in. meo's posts say you need to format to ext2\n".."but I've successfully used an ext3 partition. You need to\n".."choose a directory from the drop down box to run this script\n".."in. Make sure the directory you choose doesn't have\n".."subdirectories named source or newcd. Press the copy\n".."files button to start the first part of the scripts.\n".."This will create the source and newcd directories,\n".."mount your cdrom, and copy all necessary files.\n".."You'll then be prompted to make your changes to the source\n".."directory. After you make your changes you will need to\n".."press the create iso button which will first make your\n".."compressed filesystem and then makes the iso mydsl.iso\n".."in your work directory. The iso should now be ready to burn.\n".."\n".."If you already have your source and newcd directories\n".."on your hard drive ready to be made into an iso you can still\n".."use this app, just skip pushing the copy files button, You'll\n".."still need to choose the directory from the drop down box.";align=Align.right}w_help:end_layout()w_main:show()

whoami = getenv("USER")if whoami~="root" thenfl_message("You might as well close this program now,\n".."since root power is needed to build an iso.\n".."Try \"sudo remaster-flua\"")end

I put the remaster-flua up on my monkey web server so you can just download it if you want it.

< http://plinej.no-ip.org/remaster-flua >

You'll need to use save link as...

Posted by weirdo on Feb. 10 2006,18:43

Hello I request assistance in remastering, if you have time.

I have 3 partitions on my laptop: SuSE 10, WinME, WinXP.

I remastered the DSL, following this webpage's instructions:< http://www.x-dsl.org/wiki/Remastering >

A couple of problems, however.

Cloop does not seem to be available for install from YaST, but when I type "modprobe cloop", no error occurs.

Also, "create_compressed_fs" was not available on SuSE, so I simply downloaded the binary from Yahoo, put it into /bin, and that seemed to work

I created a 51MB myremaster.iso file. I copied it to my WinME directory and booted into WinXP, loaded NERO and then burnt it. The CD did not boot, but it appears that there are files there (boot.* and KNOPPIX).

I downloaded DSL in WinXP and burnt it using NERO so I can't understand why this didn't work.

Thank you for reading this.WeirDo

Posted by dstude on Feb. 27 2006,16:33

Clacker,

My biggest concern is establishing a source of software updates that is a little safer (right now) than myDSL. If I need to use a different version or a more up-to-date version, I don't want to be stuck waiting until someone creates a myDSL package. Naturally, of course, I wouldn't be opposed to creating one, myself, but, first things first, I'd like to make sure all my bases are covered.

I had some problems installing stuff from debian at first, which is why I decided to try to go to source code compilation, but I'll give it a shot once again with this procedure.

Posted by meo on Mar. 03 2006,00:24

Hi again!

Just wanted to say "Thank You" to plinej for an interesting script to make remastering a breeze. I might just give it a try.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by loupdesteppes on Mar. 07 2006,22:20

first sorry for my english, im a frenchHoppe this with give you sompe help or way to remasterize...

I needed something like Damnsmall but not Damnsmal, more precisely, a security tool. Till now i used a knoppix remasterI had a look on Damnsmall, very interesting because small and fast when used as livecd, even that Damnsmall pay it with less fonctionalities. OK...i have it fully remasterized in this way....and i give you some tips.For that i have used the debian i have installed on my laptop with reiserfs filesystem3 things have to be done:1) copy the files2) add and remove things i need or not3) mkisofsOK !....

1) copy the files:

I used the last Damnsmall2.2 and have all my work in a partition....if this one is empty or not doesnt matter.There are 2 methodes, the first one is more elegant, I have used the second one1méth: Cloop the cdrom to make a copy of the files#mkdir /mnt/cloop#mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom (mount the X-DSL cdrom)#mount -o ro,loop=/dev/cloop0 /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX /mnt/cloop #mkdir xdsl#mkdir xdsl/sources#mkdir xdsl/newcd#cp -a /cdrom/* xdsl/newcd#cp -a /mnt/cloop/* xdsl/sources#cp -a /mnt/cloop/.bash_profile xdsl/source

2meth is to boot with Damnsmall and copy the decompressed KNOPPX on xdsl/sourcesAfter that you can reboot, return on your host linux and copy the rest of the cd on xdsl/newcd

2 Customize DamnSmall

Tiaaa...Damnsmall developpers are very clever...This part was rather hot like tabasco to do...I didnt want to become crazy and i choice a dirty but efficient and quick way to do it, i didnt want to spend nights on this part. Then if somenone can help me to do that all cleaner ??....

The probleme with Damnsmall is that they have destroy all the package environnement...thats ok if we only use the dsl package but i wanted the good old debian deb packages...Ok...Things they must be added !!: /etc/apt/source.lists (we need it) with Debian testing My source.lists looks like that:deb < http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ > testing maindeb < http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ > oldstable main non-free contribThen some files the system needs in:/var/lib/var/lib/dpkg/

I copied them all from my host debianThen......#chroot /mnt/sda7/xdsl/sources/KNOPPIX#dpkg—restore#dpkg -query - (just to see all the installed packages)#apt-get update#apt-get upgrade (just to see but dont accept)make your apt-get remove /install Nota: you will have every time a lot of warnings, but doesnt matter, they are only warnings (i said it, its a dirty method)accept the install of the glibcJust a little trick: to prevent all the possible conflicts use theAPT::Force-LoopBreak "true"; (dont forget the ; )

If you have depends problems, dont use apt-get -f installbut#dpkg --force-overwrite -i /var/cache/apt/archives/x11-common_6.9.0.dfsg.1-4_all.dethis is f eg to solve a probleme with x11-common i had

When all that is finished, remove the directoties and files you have added get empty /var/lib/apt/listthen#apt-get cleanremove status avalaible /var/lib/dpkg/info /etc/apt/sources.listPurge /var/lib var/temp /temp /usr/share/locale with all langages u dont needDont forget to delete the file containig the param APT::Force-LoopBreak "true"; (/etc/apt/apt.conf)Maybe i omit here some little things i have done, let me know...yes, i added some libs in /lib /var/lib and /usr/lib

Thank's for your post on making a remaster. I, and many with me I think, would appreciate a more explicit explanation of how you make your remaster. This to make it possible for newbies and selflearned enthusiasts (like me) to understand and use this information. Thank's beforehand!

Have fun,meo

Posted by loupdesteppes on Mar. 12 2006,21:28

Ok meo, as soon as im in mood to, i will try to be more explicite in my description.but if you have any pblm, let me know.Anyway, my remaster was easy to do because i already have a debian installed on my host, and i know how a dedian works with for eg apt-get and dpkg. And DSL is Debian or Debianlike as well as Knoppix.I will try to do what you ask...

Posted by Blackbird on Mar. 16 2006,21:03

Quote (meo @ July 03 2005,15:41)

Hi again shui!

Well I thought I had answered your questions in my last post. I'll try to be a little more precise and explicit this time. You can't use a part of a windows partition (let's say like something C in the windows system) for reasons I mentioned in my last post. If you are going to make a bigger remaster like 200 MB or more you will need a linux partition on your harddrive and also what is called a swap partition. If your harddrive doesn't have this it will not be possible to make the remaster you want. If you have a harddrive that is big enough you can quite easily make the required partitions. So in my HOWTO I use hda3 as an example from my own setup. The part about backgrounds and styles is just what it says, different backgrounds and styles I like and want to use in DSL as I have in other distributions of linux before, like slackware etc. So it is nothing really needed. That's just what I like to have on my remaster. If something still isn't clear to you just post a question in this thread and I'll see what I can do. Depending on my circumstances it might pass a couple of days before I can answer. But if I can I will.

Have fun,meo

MEO, Is there anyway to make a remaster by just using RAM if I have 1 gig of RAM. I have no way or desire to pruchase a HD to connect to this laptop. I would like to remaster with TCL and EXPECT but cannot afford to make changes to the Hard Drive.

Posted by meo on Mar. 17 2006,09:53

Hi Blackbird!

I guess You could try to do a DSL-Ram Remaster. It is posted before but here it comes again:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program

#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1 (Here I have my favourite cd-burning program)

Maybe 1 GB Ram will be enough in itself. Try it out You have nothing to loose!

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on April 07 2006,15:27

Hi there!

If someone knows how to do an "apt-get" remaster I would highly appreciate some help on that subject. Thank's in advance!

Have fun,meo

Posted by clacker on April 07 2006,18:18

meo, I'm not really sure what your asking for, but I think it's how to use apt-get during the remastering process to stuff new apps into the remaster instead of the base system.

This used to be easier. For some reason when I started using dsl, I could do a chroot and then run mydsl-load fine. Then things changed and I needed to be user dsl so I had to su dsl before I ran mydsl-load. Now even that doesn't work but here's how I got apt-get loaded into the remaster:

First I create my directories the same way you showed us so many moons ago. Create the source and newcd directories wherever you want to. Copy the dsl-dpkg.dsl package into the source/KNOPPIX/home/dsl directory. Change what you shell believes is the root using the chroot command. Use tar to extract the contents of the dsl-dpkg.dsl package into the new root directory (your remaster's root). Run apt-get update, then install using apt-get install whatever. Then exit the chroot using the exit command (or hitting control-d).

Code Sample

## make and populate the directories source and newcd as before## stop your old procedure just before the first mkisofs step# copy dsl-dpkg.dsl into the home/dsl directory of your remastercp dsl-dpkg.dsl source/KNOPPIX/home/dsl# change the root directory to the one your remaster will usesudo chroot source/KNOPPIX# The source/KNOPPIX directory now apears as# the root of the shell you're incd /home/dsl# install your dpkg and apt-get package using tartar -xzvf dsl-dpkg.dsl --same-owner -C /rm dsl-dpkg.dsl # you no longer need it# update the package list# edit /etc/apt/sources.list to change from stable# if you need to (I don't anymore)apt-get update# now install whatever you wantapt-get install gcc g++ make g77 nasm patch libncurses5-dev libreadline4-dev# then clean away the deb files since they're not needed anymoreapt-get cleanexit

After a year of trying, I've finally remastered DSL (three or four times, but I had some other troubles) and burned it (twice I managed to get this far) and both versions I've booted have given me an error message saying that the knoppix filesystem isn't found. What am I doing wrong?

Posted by meo on April 11 2006,22:06

Hello guys!

Thank You very much clacker for the info about using apt-get to make a remaster! I'll dig in to it ASAP. I'm trying out the new 2.4RC1 unremastered(for now) as I'm posting this. To shui I have to say, that at least when it comes to me, I have to know how you did the remaster before I can comment on what went wrong.

It looks OK to me. My more or less educated guess would be that you might not have enough memory. Your post doesn't say. I have 256 MB ram and 1 GB swap and I know that is sufficient. It might be as simple as that.

Have fun and good luck,meo

Posted by loupdesteppes on April 13 2006,14:32

About using apt-get, the real one

apt-get and dpkg are both debian packagesForget knoppix, because knoppix is a subproduct of debianUsing apt and dpkg suppose first to have the libs they are needed. These libs arent in damnsmall or have beeen deleted. Damnsmall is a i should say, a "locked system" tahts to say, without any deep changes, you can only use the dsl packages

To recover apt and dpkg, you must first reopen the system with some files whose haev to be installed, then install the libs there are needed....and transform your damnsmall into a little debianThen install apt-get and dpkgand then make an update of the system

Sorry for my "cloudy" explications but if you are using a debian and understand how it works you know what i mean. Have a look on my "remastering Damnsmall 2.2"

Posted by meo on April 14 2006,10:34

Hello loup!

I'm sorry to say that your post didn't enlighten me much about using apt-get in remastering. I really like DSL and it is fun to use. I have used debian but not now since DSL is the better choice for me. I have used it for a couple of years now and it is great so thank you to all the developers from me. Keep up the good work! I have made a remaster of the last 2.4RC1 and it works just like a charm. I haven't suceeded in doing an apt-get remaster yet, but I'm working on it.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by loupdesteppes on April 14 2006,18:05

hello meoim wondering if you can without having a debian installed, because apt-get is a debian package. As i said Damnsmall is a locked system, A lot of repertories and files have been deleted. Have a look with google about the files "status" and "avalaible" you will learn how to lock a system.With my method, i copied libs and files from my existing debian into my dsl decrompressed, had to make new links.....and after that i chrooted into dsl andinstalled glibc, apt-get, dpkg....and update the systemLet me know

Posted by meo on April 18 2006,17:50

Hello guys!

Finally, based on clackers post about apt-get, I'm posting a remastering HOWTO using apt-get. Here it comes:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

I used this remaster to install gcc and it worked just fine using the stable sources. I didn't have to force anything. It just worked. I guess you can use unstable sources and make it work also. So it might just be a matter of what you want to accomplish.

Have fun out there in cyberspace,meo

Posted by AkosPrime on April 26 2006,16:15

Hello All,

I've gone through all the pages of this post once and am still a little lost for what I want to do. Let me describe what I want to do and then hopefully someone can help me in the right direction or convince me that DSL is not the solution for me.

I want to create a bootable CD that will start the Apache HTTP server (eventually I'd like to add Tomcat but for now the httpd is enough). The web content that Apache will serve (i.e. DocumentRoot) will be a NFS mounted directory. In addition to Apache I would like ssh/sshd, iptables, syslogd (for remotely logging information), and sendmail (so status emails can be sent from the box). The CD will need to have fixed IP address information set. I will NOT be using a hard drive, or USB key drive for any customization information, I want it all to be in the CD. The boxes I plan to use this on have a great deal of physical memory (2+ GB) so I would like the installation to load entirely into a ramdisk if possible in order to speed operation.

Beyond the few programs above, and the associated subprograms and libraries needed to run them I don't really need anything other than usual simple tools (i.e. BusyBox type stuff). I don't need X or any window managers, I don't need a browser or an email client or a chat client, etc.

I DO need to be able to restrict access to the root account via password/sudo so I need to be able to set the root password prior to burning the CD -- again I need everything ready to go off the CD with no customizations once it's booted.

DSL seems like the best place to start since it's already stripped down, but I've read about all the problems people have had adding programs and libraries that aren't in it by default. So is this something that I can do? If so, which how-to(s) should I concentrate on using? If not, are there any suggestions on what I should look into?

Posted by doobit on April 26 2006,19:42

Look at this. < http://lamppix.tinowagner.com/ > It may do what you want. There is a related one called Xampp too, < http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html >

Posted by AkosPrime on April 26 2006,19:55

doobit,

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately it looks like Xampp is more of an install onto hdd concept, rather than a live CD. Now lamppix looks interesting, but it's kind of scary that it hasn't been updated in almost 2 years. I guess what I'm trying to do is figure out how to recreate Lamppix myself using whatever version of Apache that I need. I'm going to drop an email to the lamppix author to see if he/she can give me a how-to for making my own lamppix-like product from a DSL or full Knoppix baseline.

Any other input on this from the DSL group would still be appreciated.

Posted by meo on May 01 2006,19:26

Hello AkosPrime!

I'm pretty sure You could use DSL for the purpose described before. There is an apache module that can be used. I'm not to familiar with servers so I can't be of much help but I wish You all luck.

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by clacker on May 01 2006,22:25

AkosPrime, xampp isn't just for hard drives. If you have enough memory you can run it from a liveCD with no hard drive at all! I see from the free command I'm using 558 Meg of memory right now, if that helps. All I had to do was to download the xampp-linux-1.5.2.tar.gz file from < Apache Friends website > and then run

Then looking at localhost with firefox showed the startup page. I also could have then run

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security

to add passwords and such to lampp. It was all very easy and quite painless.

Remastering with xampp wasn't so painless untill I learned the trick. Follow meo's instructions, stopping before the first mkisofs command. Run the tar command only put the files in the source directory's opt instead of the root of your running system:

sudo tar -xzvf xampp-linux-1.5.2.tar.gz -C source/KNOPPIX/opt/

I got an error where lampp couldn't open files until I added a line

sudo cp -rp /KNOPPIX/opt/lampp /opt/

to the /opt/bootlocal.sh file of the remaster. For whatever reason when the files get copied from /KNOPPIX the first time they sometimes have different users and groups. The correct ones are in the remaster, the startup process is where they get changed.

Now add your web pages to source/KNOPPIX/opt/lampp/htdocs and your cgi stuff to source/KNOPPIX/opt/lampp/cgi-bin.

Changing default passwords, and adding users and groups to the remaster requires you do use the chroot command to change the root to source/KNOPPIX/ and then use the normal commands (exit to exit the changed root and return to normal):

Then continue remastering as normal. Not so bad at all. Although, you might just untar the xampp package each time if you want to.

Posted by charliez on May 10 2006,19:54

Where do you download dsl-dpkg.dsl for your remastering? Every link I'm trying comes up dead.

EDIT: neermind... finally found one that let me pull it.

Thanks for all the info in this thread so far. I'm trying my hand at my first remaster on 2.3. <crosses fingers>

Posted by meo on May 11 2006,18:48

Hi again!

Finally I have figured out how to make a remaster suitable for programming and compiling purposes. The files mentioned in the remaster can be downloaded from The myDSL repository under the System menu. The link to the repository is found when you click on the download link at damnsmalllinux.org. So here it comes:

Apt-Get Ram-Remastering HOWTO for DSLMaking a remaster suitable for programming

Download the following modules to home/dsldsl-dpkg.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1.dsl

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

I use this remaster now as I'm polishing my programming skills. The reason I want emacs as an editor is that it's very helpful when programming in C++. Naturally other modules can be added to a remaster the same way as described. Hope this is helpful for you guys!

As always "Have Fun",regards meo

Posted by meo on May 12 2006,16:35

Hello again!I just tried to include k3b in the last remaster and it works fine. Just add it after the other dsl-files and untar it the same way. A little note about the remaster: there should be two "-" signs before same in same-owner. I put it there but it doesn't show in my browser. Perhaps it looks fine in other browsers.

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on May 14 2006,22:52

Hello guys!

Just a little suggestion. There is a new gcc1.dsl in the testing category of the mydslcollection. It contains more libraries so there might not be any need to install others than them. I just made a remaster with it and I crammed in gimp-1.2.dsl also and everything seems to work as it should.

quick question, for Firefox what folder do I have to move to savbe my bookmarks? I'd like to make it so that those get saved as well.

Posted by meo on May 16 2006,07:10

Hello gatherer!

Just add /home/dsl/.mozilla to the filetool.lst and make a backup. Your bookmarks will then be saved and restored when you boot up again. Personally I keep a backup file on my USB-drive and one on my harddisk just in case something happens.

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on May 16 2006,10:15

Hello guys!

Just a quick note. I just made a programming remaster of the new DSL 2.4 adding gimp and k3b also and it worked nice. There doesn't seem to be a conflict between tcc and gcc.

As always have fun out there,meo

Posted by johncc on May 18 2006,01:44

Hello meo et. al.,

I have been trying this for a while and have a few questions.

1) Is the procedure from post #1 in this thread [still] accurate, since 2004? Or, perhaps it has been edited in place to incorporated changes on 50 pages of subsequent discussion?

2) Once I chroot I no longer can get to the internet to apt-get, etc -- nor even ping. I even tried the "mount /proc" and "mount /dev" steps, though they disappeared in later version of the procedure that I saw somewhere around page 37.

3) I put some stuff in source/home/dsl before I created the KNOPPIX file from it. But in the resulting LiveCD that I boot up, it was not there.

4) The ISO file prior to burning was about 72 meg. I tried to use the "Install to PenDrive" tool to put it on a 128mb stick, but it ran out of space. I guess I'm missing some math somewhere

I think I sort of understand (3) and (4), but I'm really more curious about (1) and (2)

Thanks!John

Posted by meo on May 18 2006,09:36

Hi johncc!

The old remastering process doesn't work with the more resent versions of DSL. To make the internet connection work right off the bat I now make the whole remastering process in RAM. I have only 256 MB of RAM so I have made a swap-partition that is 2 GB. This kind of remastering takes a lot of space.If you want something in home/dsl after remastering it should go in etc/skel. Here comes the HOWTO I mainly use:

Apt-Get Ram-Remastering HOWTO for DSLMaking a remaster suitable for programming

Download the following modules to home/dsldsl-dpkg.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1-with-libs.dsl

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

Of course you might want to add other dsl-files the same way. I have added gimp-1.2.dsl, k3b.dsl and skype.tar.gz also and they all work as far as I can tell. I hope this answers your questions otherwise get back to this thread and I will try to help.

As always have fun,meo

Posted by johncc on May 18 2006,13:53

Thanks for your reply, but if your internet connection (like mine) does NOT work after you chroot, why does your procedure include:

For me the apt-get update would not work at this point, since I have no network connectivity. I would have had to have gotten the emacs21.deb file earlier, copied it over to home/dsl with the gcc dsl stuff, and then "dpkg install emacs21...deb".

Since I wrote last, I did succeed in doing just that (with a debian distcc package).

Turns out the main problem I was having is that the "Create a Pendrive" menu tool will create the bootable flashdrive nicely from a user-specified ISO file, but it only creates a (hardcoded) 50mb partition to hold it. For my immediate purposes I just hacked the script to make a 90mb partition, and it then worked.

Now I have a compiler farm in my pocket! (distcc.samba.org)

Thanks!John

Posted by meo on May 18 2006,16:04

Hi again johncc!

My internet connection works fine after chrooting so I can install emacs with apt-get as explained.

Have fun remastering and compiling,meo

Posted by johncc on May 18 2006,18:40

Oh, I see! Do you have any idea why chrooting would block the internet connection to just the chrooted session (other xterms, browsers, etc, network still continues to work)? Then when I exit the chroot it works again.

Also, what did you mean by this: "To make the internet connection work right off the bat I now make the whole remastering process in RAM." Looks to me like you're still using /mnt/hda1?

Thanks!John

Posted by johncc on May 18 2006,18:46

Quote

Oh, I see! Do you have any idea why chrooting would block the internet connection to just the chrooted session (other xterms, browsers, etc, network still continues to work)? Then when I exit the chroot it works again.

Also, in the original procedure what was the purpose of

#mount --bind /dev /mnt/hda3/KNOPPIX/dev#mount -t proc /proc proc

??

Thank you!John

Posted by meo on May 18 2006,20:54

Hi again johncc!

Well what I mean is that i do the whole remastering process in the RAM memory. As seen in the HOWTO there is no reference to using a harddrive for the remaster. I only keep files I want to add on hda1 and I used to copy the iso-file to hda1 because there I had my favourite cd-burning program. Now I have k3b in my remaster so the last step is unnecessary for me. And frankly I usually just make a remaster of the KNOPPIX-file now as I use a USB-Drive (Sandisk Titanium 2 GB) to run DSL. That giver me plenty of room for files I want to keep. I have tried to make a remaster in another partition (a long time ago) and then I had problems with the internetconnection. But since I've done the whole thing in the RAM-memory there haven't been any problems of that kind. When it comes to the mount proc part it is clearly stated that I had not tried that type of remastering so I can't tell you so much about it. The last HOWTO is the way I do things and it always works as long as I don't make any typos. I hope this post makes it clear how the Remastering HOWTO is supposed to work.

Keep on having fun with DSL,meo

Posted by gatherer on May 19 2006,16:27

Hello Meo,

I sed the method above to add the amsn.dsl and xine.dsl to my latest remaster. Everything seemed to go smooth, except when I rebooted from the new cd the amsn and xine icons on the desktop were not there. the programs were still located in the mydsl menu and run perfectly. do you have any Ideas in regards to the missing Icons?

Posted by meo on May 19 2006,17:36

Hello gatherer!

I guess that the ones that made the extensions didn't bother to make icons. It's kind of optional.

Have fun,meo

Posted by gatherer on May 19 2006,18:08

Well if I install amsn or xine using the mydsl process that downloads it from the site and installs the application then the Icons are there. if I make a remaster using your steps the icons are not there. I'm confused as to what is not being placed in the proper directory or if there is a config file I have to modify or something like that

Posted by clivesay on May 19 2006,18:45

gatherer -

Knoppix does not have anything in /home as a default. As users are created, the /home directories are created by copying all the files from /etc/skel. So, the DSL CD boots and at one point the user dsl is created and the contents of /etc/skel are copied to /home/dsl.

So if you are remastering, any files you would like in /home/dsl should be put in /etc/skel. Icons would be placed in /etc/skel/.xtdesktop

Hope that helps

Chris

Posted by gatherer on May 19 2006,18:58

that might help. I'll give it a try.

can I just copy all files in my home/dsl directory into the /etc/skel directory?

Posted by meo on May 20 2006,12:50

Hello gatherer!

Yes you can copy all you want to have in home/dsl to etc/skel. If you check the remaster HOWTO the backgrounds are copied to etc/skel/.fluxbox and in the remaster they appear in home/dsl/.fluxbox. Sorry that my guess was wrong about the icons. I never use icons myself. I prefer a clean desktop.

Have fun remastering,meo

Posted by gatherer on May 22 2006,03:15

yes that worked out well. I have also been able to copy my favourites in Firefox and myamsn profile to a remaster of DSL.

thanks for your help everyone it's been very useful.. now if only I can get a firewire card working on here.

Posted by gatherer on May 23 2006,01:50

one other question. when doing the remaster if I want DSL to automatically use certian cheatcodes so that I, being as lazy as I am, don't have to always enter them. What file would I place them in?

Posted by newOldUser on May 30 2006,16:55

Just wanted to note a link to a Linux Forums article on remastering DSL: < http://www.linuxforums.org/desktop....le.html >

Posted by iusebash on June 03 2006,08:39

How much space, ram, and swap do I need?

BTW, the tutorial has not been updated for over two years. Does it still work under the latest version (2.4)?

Posted by meo on June 03 2006,21:24

Hello iusebash!

Check out page 51.

Have fun,meo

Posted by iusebash on June 08 2006,18:59

I am at this point in Page 51:

#apt-get update

I am getting a

Code Sample

bash-2.05b# apt-get updatebash: apt-get: command not found

The Net is working fine as I am typing this while in DSL 2.4.

Posted by meo on June 08 2006,20:42

Hi iusebash!

First you have to install dsl-dpkg.dsl as described just above where you are in the HOWTO. That is the package that makes apt-get work. If you are installing emacs just remember that it has to be started from a terminal or the "Run Program" in the DSL-menu.

does work. Again, no idea why but it might help somebody. If at first you don't succeed, keep fiddling.

Keith

Posted by meo on June 28 2006,14:08

Hello keithw!

Anything that can be of help for someone when it comes to remastering is welcome. I've never experienced that kind of problem but if you have probably others have or will come across i too. So, thanks for your input. Happy remastering!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on June 28 2006,14:30

RAM-Remastering HOWTO for DSLMaking a remaster suitable for compiling sourcecode

Download the following modules to home/dslcvs.dslflex-bison-libtool.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1-with-libs.dsl

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by MDG on July 03 2006,14:11

I've been following this thread and what I want to do seems to go against the grain, but here goes.

I have used the mkmydsl script to make three or four of my own distro (it was quite a learning expeirence). I actually want isolinux to start and to be prompted for cheatcodes - this would override grub installed on other machines I might use. In a ram remaster using /home/dsl/myremaster and /home/dsl for the final iso, how and where would I include isolinux?

Another question - with a ram remaster, I've been copying my extensions and such to the remaster directory before running the mkmydsl script. I would like to make changes to fluxbox and have them included and want to verify my options: a) save them to filetool.lst, b) save them in a backup file (can that be done in ram and save in the myremaster directory?) c) make changes in /etc/skel? Can this be done before I run the mkmydsl script or would I have to try and do this through an aterm?

didn't work for me. After fiddling for some time I found an error message that told me that 65536 is not divisible by 512. So after a quick calculation I tried 65560 and it worked. Why? I don't know.

That line didn't work for me today, and before it had. I tried making your change and that didn't work either. Reasonably enough since 65536 is divisible by 512.

Then something changed and it worked. The difference came right after I switched from putting a sudo at the beginning of the line, to doing sudo su . I tend to doubt that made the difference, it was probably some change I didn't notice making. I won't be able to test it until it stops working again.

I loaded up the CDRom and it was there, I copied it to newcd/boot and after that the routine worked.

I'm using version 3.01 with a frugal install, and maybe the frugal install didn't copy boot/isolinux? I never needed it until now.

Posted by charliez on July 11 2006,17:08

I'm trying to customize the desktop menus but realized it's not showing anything but fluxbox menu with xterm, Restart and exit. I even re-copied /home/dsl/.fluxbox/menu from outside the chroot to my source and overwrote my source a couple times and it's still not displaying the menu.

When you are in your chroot source environment and mount proc and su - dsl then launch startx, do you have the full DSL menu?

Posted by clacker on July 11 2006,17:38

charliez, there is a directory called /etc/skel/ that contains the skeleton of the home directory. If you look at /home/dsl in the remaster it's blank. If you want to add or change things that exist in the home directory, you'll need to add or change them in the /etc/skel/ directory of the remaster, which gets loaded into /home/dsl on startup.

If you are running startx (which I had no idea was possible from a chroot, I guess you weren't in X already?), you could always copy /etc/skel/.fluxbox to /home/dsl before running startx and see if that displays the way you want it to. If you aren't starting X as root you may need to move those files into rot's home directory. Then copy it into /etc/skel afterwords.

Posted by charliez on July 11 2006,18:06

I am able to go in and out of X (via startx) because when I boot DSL off the CDROM, I enter the option dsl 2 which boots to the command line as root.

I've copied the .fluxbox contents from a few different places and they all work fine on the initial launch when I'm in my chroot. But if I edit the menu file the entire menu structure gets wiped out when you exit and re-launch startx.

I have learned ~/.fluxbox/menu is somehow bound to ~/.fluxbox/init but this second file appears to only be updated when you use the menu item "reconfigure" ?? Does anybody know how to rewrite menu and init from the command line so your window manager retains your customizations?

Posted by charliez on July 13 2006,18:29

Quote (johncc @ May 17 2006,21:44)

2) Once I chroot I no longer can get to the internet to apt-get, etc -- nor even ping. I even tried the "mount /proc" and "mount /dev" steps, though they disappeared in later version of the procedure that I saw somewhere around page 37.

I found I couldn't do Internet in chroot either. I had to put some nameserver x.x.x.x entries in source/etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf and then I was able too.

Posted by hfr on July 18 2006,11:51

Hello,

i would like to remaster DSL but experience some problems.When i want to mount a partition, an error appears ("mount: /dev/sda5 ist not a valid block device"). In my "normal" OS (SuSE 10.1) i can mount this partition without a problem. The file format is ext2 (i also tried reiserfs).

My HD is connected via S-ATA. Perhaps this is the origin of this problem. If yes, what can i do to fix?

Thanks in advance!

hfr

Posted by newby on July 25 2006,18:45

Moved to a new thread...

Posted by jimihieu on July 27 2006,14:03

hi all,

sorry if this post was asked before, i tried to search but cant find solutions.I installed DSL into HDD then remaster it back to a liveCD using script provided in one of the post in this thread.When i boot up the live CD it get error message:"Cantt find DSL file system, sorry.Dropping you to a (very limited) shell..."

Someone please point out where did i go wrong?Thank you for your time.Jimi.

Posted by sankarv on Aug. 02 2006,09:56

Quote

When i want to mount a partition, an error appears ("mount: /dev/sda5 ist not a valid block device")

I also faced this problem.Currently DSL does not support SATA. So i suggest you to use a USB drive or some other harddisk for re-mastering.

You can try DSL-N , it supports SATA.

Posted by meo on Aug. 07 2006,17:19

Hello jimihieu!

I've experienced the same thing. Usually it means that the KNOPPIX-file is corrupted in some way (if it is not missing). It can depend on to little memory for the remastering process. That can cause that the KNOPPIX-file doesn't build properly. I hope it works out!

Have fun,meo

Posted by charliez on Aug. 08 2006,11:42

Hi meo!

When using your steps to remaster and you wanted to inject some mydsl UCI files into the remaster, would you just put them into $source/opt and would the new cd load them automatically or are there additional boot time steps needed?

Posted by meo on Aug. 09 2006,04:55

Hi charliez!

As I use an usb pendrive I just keep uci- and unc-files that I want loaded right away in a directory called mydsl. Dsl files however are easy to put in a remaster as previously mentioned.

Have fun,meo

Posted by jimihieu on Aug. 09 2006,09:41

hi meo,you have any latest HOWTO for remaster DSL that was installed on HDD?thanx

Posted by meo on Aug. 16 2006,16:28

Hello jimihieu!

Well I have never made a remaster from an harddrive installation. I make remasters directly from the live cd and then usually in RAM instead of using the harddrive at all. But now I have been doing remasters from the live cd copying the contents do directories on the harddrive. That makes it easy to make small changes on a following up remaster since you already have it all copied to the harddrive. This is the latest HOWTO using this method:

Programmers Remastering HOWTO for DSL

Download the following modules to home/dslcvs.dslflex-bison-libtool.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1-with-libs.dsl

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Aug. 31 2006,20:03

Hello, Y'all!

Just want to mention a cool thing that's possible when making a remaster like the one mentioned in my last post. It's possible to compile program source-code directly into the remaster after adding "gcc1-with-libs.dsl" to the remaster. Just add the source-code to the same place as the dsl-packages added and compile them from there. But check for dependencies before to make it work. I've done it with bcrypt (witch needs zlib to work so I compiled in that one first). I haven't tried any larger programs yet as I don't feel the need but it might work.

Have fun out there in cyberspace,meo

Posted by slimeph on Sep. 04 2006,09:41

done this part.. what im doing in hda3:- removing installed app. the first victim being beaver. found in whereis that it is located in /usr/bin and /home/dsl/.xtdesktop. try deleting it gave me "read only file system"-chmod 777 the file - no effect

how would i circumvent this

note: im only on page 40 of this thread.. if some solution have been in the other pages.. i dont know..thanks.

It took a while to read through all this, but I don't think I saw an explanation on how to remaster a USB install without using a CD or HD.

Let's say you have a spare USB memory stick and plenty of RAM, how would you go about it?

Posted by meo on Sep. 16 2006,17:05

Hi Juanito and slimeph!

On page 56 there is a RAM-Remastering HOWTO. That is a remaster entirely made in RAM. Depending on how much RAM you have there might be a need of a swap-partition. It is possible to use an usb-drive as swap. Just format it as swap and it should be found during the booting of the box with dsl. When it comes to take things away from the dsl-distro I have no experience at all so I can't be of much help there. Sorry!

Have fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on Oct. 27 2006,12:00

Hi guys!

I just made an programming remaster of DSL RC2 and it seems to work just fine. This is the way I did it:

Making a remaster suitable for compiling sourcecode

Download the following modules to home/dslcvs.dslflex-bison-libtool.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1-with-libs.dsl

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode.

Usually I don't make an iso-file to burn since I use dsl-embedded. Just by remastering the KNOPPIX-file I can delete the old KNOPPIX-file and copy in the new one in it's place. This way it's possible to save a lot of time.

Have fun out there,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 07 2006,13:36

Hi Y'all!

Just a quick note: I have made a remaster of DSL RC3 and it seems to work just OK. I installed emacs using apt-get also and it works. The only thing is that it has to be started from a command-line or run program in the DSL-menu. I used the HOWTO just posted but added dsl-dpkg.dsl to start with so I could install emacs which is my favourite editor. That's it.

Have fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by oznozz on Nov. 17 2006,21:32

Appologies if in my haste, I have overlooked something in the 60 pages of posts in this thread...

BUT

I have followed the remastering directions with dsl3.0.1 iso and I have managed to create a lemon. When the system boots, it fails to detect any RAM and therefore fails with a kernel panic because creation of /var/run/utmp fails. I've tried this both with modifications and without modifications of the DSL system on one machine. The DSL that I'm using works fine until I try to remaster it. Any hints about how to fix this problem?

Thanks

Posted by meo on Nov. 17 2006,22:13

Well oznozz!

To be honest I've never heard or experienced what you describe but if you give me more specifics about your computer, how much ram you have and the size of your swap-partition in particular, I might give you some help.

Have fun,meo

Posted by oznozz on Nov. 18 2006,19:22

It's an Acer laptop bought within the last year. It has 1 Gig of DDR RAM and a 1.7 Ghz Intel Processor (I'm away from it, so I can't give more specific stats). The hard drive is 100 GB split into two ~50 GB partitions, one has Windows, and one has Ubuntu 6.10. There's another small partition for booting. RAM and swap shouldn't be a problem! The vanilla DSL creates a RAM disc of about 800 MB and it reports 1023700kB of RAM detected. I can't figure out how following the instructions verbatim would result in the "no memory" error.

Posted by meo on Nov. 19 2006,13:24

Hi again!

Sounds kind of weird that it shouldn't work with the remaster. It seems to me that the KNOPPIX-file hasn't been built properly and therefore doesn't boot right. With that amount of ram memory there shouldn't be any need of a special swap-partition on the harddrive. That is usually the problem when the KNOPPIX-file doesn't build properly (the remastering process needs a lot of memory to work; at least a gig) which leads me to another question: How did you go about remastering? Which method did you use? If remastering on a harddrive partition it should be formatted with extended 2 filesystem otherwise problems will occur. So my suggestion is to make the remaster entirely in RAM and se if it works. You'll find the instructions on page 56 in this thread.

Have fun and hope it works out,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 29 2006,20:50

Hi guys!

Just made a remastering of the newly released DSL 3.1 and it works wonderfully. This might be the best release ever. My sincere compliments to all that have contributed to this release. I'm pondering over a new way of making a remaster and if it works I'll post it ASAP, so stay tuned.

Have fun everyone out there with DSL,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 06 2006,10:48

Hi all remaster fans!

With the newer versions of DSL there also has come new possibilities to make remasters. Personally I made the following type of remaster from an usb pendrive. I unzipped DSL-Embedded 3.1 directly to the drive. Then I created a mydsl directory containing gnu-utils.unc and gcc1-with-libs.unc and booted the drive with the following cheatcodes: norestore and xsetup. Once up and running it is possible to compile source code and in this example I'll use bcrypt and a library that it depends on; zlib. Copy the unzipped directories of these to home/dsl. They can be found on the bcrypt site. Just google for bcrypt and you'll find it. Here comes the HOWTO:

Now you have the both unc-files and bcrypt inside the KNOPPIX file. So just by removing the old KNOPPIX file from your usb pendrive and replacing it with the new you will have the capabilities of compiling source code and encrypting files with bcrypt. So the principle is that unc-files that are mounted will get transferred to the source dir when you do the:

#cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source

This is the way I've done it but it can probably be done in other ways but it really is an easy way to make a remaster. This works with unc-files but not with uci-files because the uci-files are selfcontained and doesn't get transferred to the source directory.

As always have fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by oznozz on Dec. 06 2006,21:31

Hi Meo and fellow Remasterers of the (DSL) Universe,

I tried the remastering instructions on page 56 of this post with DSL 3.1 and have had great success. Perhaps there was something amiss with 3.0.1 that caused it to not like detecting my RAM after being remastered. I never did track down the cause of its malady.

Now for a new question :

I'm a big fan of the itty bitty size of DSL, but I needed to have things like GCC, Python and syntax-highlighting VIM available. I've included those in my personal remaster, but now I've nearly doubled the size of DSL! Fortunately, I don't need a lot of the "convenient" software that exists on the standard DSL such as two web browsers, an ftp client, a paint program, a mail client, a web server, a music program, etc. I've looked around google and here, and I don't see any obvious instructions that describe how to remove default programs such as these for remasters. I tried using apt-get remove ___ and synaptic without success.

It occurs to me that I can simply delete the executables, but that would leave space-hogging, orphaned libraries, I assume. I was wondering if there was an established way to locate and remove orphan libraries.

Thanks,oznozz

Posted by meo on Dec. 06 2006,23:24

Hi oznozz!

I'm glad it's going well for you. I'm also trying to get rid of some things I don't use like the old firefox that comes with DSL. I have removed it but get several complaints during bootup. Purely cosmetic but I'm trying to solve it. You can find info under MyDSL Extensions -> System -> Extinguishing remainders of firefox. Hope it is of any help.

Have fun remastering,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 15 2006,17:20

Hi all remaster fans!

Just a little warning: Don't try the remastering method on this page with the new DSL v3.2 RC1 because it will not work. Robert is working on an updated gnu-utils that will work on the new DSL v3.2.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 20 2006,16:17

Meo:

First off - thanks for all the work.

Now could a linux dummy ask you to help cut the extreme confusion that's grown through reading the last 62 pages and ask you to condense one point.

My remaster worked, but gnu-utils did not get loaded on the remaster. can you summarized the steps I'd have to take prior to doing the remaster to make sure gnu-utils load?

Assume I know nothing about linux - which is the truth.

Thanks, you're amazing!

Posted by meo on Dec. 21 2006,16:53

Hi SCOEIT!

Before I answer your question I'd like to know how you did the remaster and with what version of DSL. If you give me that info I'll try to help you.

Have fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 21 2006,17:56

Meo:

Thanks. Here goes (sorry for the length of the post, but wanted to give you all the details):

I used the dsl-3.1-syslinux.iso download to boot

I downloaded the app I need to use (ICAClient for Linux 8.6) and installed it. To get it to run I had to do this:Select MyDSLSelect SystemSelect gnu-utils.dsl.infoDownloaded gnu-utils.dslLoad Local selecting gnu-utilsRight Click Desktop, Apps, Tools, Select “Enable Apt”Then open a command window as Super User and run:apt-get updateapt-get install cpio libxaw6

ICAClient would then load and make a connection once I set up a connection.

I usually keep scripts, studyprojects and whatever I want to have handy in a directory on a usb-drive. That makes it easy to copy it to what will be the home directory on the live cd. In that way all I have to take along is the live cd, knowing it's all right there (and perhaps some favorite mp3's on the usb-drive):

(Don't forget to mount your usb-drive first with mount.app if you try this)

Copying your new iso-file to another partition to be able to burn itFirst be sure that you have mounted the target partition (You can use the mount.app)

#cp /mnt/hda3/myknoppix.iso /mnt/hda1

Now just burn the iso with whatever software you have installed in the target partition.

It can surely be done in many ways, but this is the way I do it

The remaster worked and the CD would boot. The ICAClient application (/usr/lib/ICAClient/wfcmgr) was present, but I got the libx6.so not found error –

I reran the gnu-utils load on the remastered CD, and the ICAClient would work.

Next I followed this procedure, which also came from this thread before I remastered again:

Quote

Follow this procedure with all the modules so they all end up in /mnt/hda3/source/home/dsl

#chroot source#cd home/dsl

OBS! Make sure there are two hyphens "-" before --same in same-owner. I doesn't look so in the standard firefox browser.

#tar -zxvf gnu-utils.dsl –same-owner -C /#rm gnu-utils.dsl#exit

To load the gnu-utils prior to remaster. On this try Citrix Client would actually start, I would not get the libx6.so error. However, the client would never try and make a connection until I redid the gu-util thing again.

My next step is to use this second remaster and work backwards, trying the “apt-get update” and apt install cpio libxaw6” to see if that helps, and if not then try the “Enable apt” then the two commands I tried first to see what is missing.

My goal is a CD that starts a classroom computer into our Citrix client. DSL seems like it will work. My problem is that when I started this process I knew nothing about Linux. I still know next to nothing, but I’m learning. It seems to me that the whole gnu-utils loading process could be done from the command line. Linux is, after all, a file based OS designed to run from a command line.

Having said that, seems to me the brute force method would seem to be to come up with what us PC types call a batch file that does the whole gnu-util loading thing on start up – I think you linux types call that a script. My problem is figuring out the right commands, command syntax, and figuring out how to include that in the remaster.

Thanks.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Dec. 21 2006,18:06

If you are just missing gnu-utils, you can load the .unc version before remastering,

or extract the .dsl to /mnt/hda3/source

Posted by meo on Dec. 21 2006,20:47

Hi again SCOEIT!

First just out of curiosity; is there any particular reason that you are using the syslinux variant of DSL? Otherwise I'd go for the DSL-3.1.iso to do a remaster (the syslinux variant I think is for very old computers that can't boot from the usual DSL-xx.iso. I'm kind of puzzled that it doesn't work as you want because gnu-utils.dsl should be there in the remaster according to your description. But if it has to be reloaded in order to work there is a very easy way to do that. If you want to reload it directly from the cd just put a directory called mydsl containing gnu-utils.dsl (or gnu-utils.unc witch is a low-ram variant of gnu-utils) on the cd. Just copy it to the newcd directory before making the iso file and it will end up in the root of the cd and load at boot. Another way of doing it is to copy the mydsl directory with gnu-utils.dsl in it onto an usb pendrive because DSL will look for a mydsl directory on at least any removable media. So give it a try and tell me how it works out!

Have fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 21 2006,21:54

Meo:

That does sound easy, and I will try it either today or tomorrow and let you know.

As for the version - I downloaded it because it was there and I did not know any better. I'm hesitant to change because it is the first linux build I've found that seems to start any computer I run it on, and just in a basic manner. It allows full control of the video hardware, sound cards, and of course NIC's. Every other version I tried would start some and not others and often would leave the video at 8 bit/ 640x480.

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 21 2006,22:11

^thehatsrule^:

I don't even know what a .unc version is - I'm that new to Linux.

Meo:

You also mentioned a USB pen drive. That's not an option. Assuming I can figure out how to set this up, eventually the CD will be used to start classroom computers.

This is a small county run high school for kids that have been asked to leave pretty much every other school in the county. Taking pen drives into that classroom only means I would be replacing a lot of pen drives.

Once I get the ICACLient to run reliably on the remaster my next challenge will be:

Figuring out how to add a restricted user.Setting up the restricted user's desk to to allow it to run only the ICACLient.Setting up the ICAClient connection settings to our server farm on that desktop.Figuring out how to make sure the connection settings and desktop settings persist through the remaster.And finally setting the remaster up so it boots into that restricted user's desktop.

I can then pull all the hard drives out of those 20-30 old Dells and just make sure the teachers always have a sufficient supply of CD's.

Thanks a bunch, and I apologize in advance for all the other dumb questions you will get as I work through this.

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 22 2006,20:52

Meo:

I added the mydsl directory to the newcd directory on my next remaster. I copied gnu-utils.dsl into it it. For good measure I also put dsl-dpkg.dsl into it.

The mydsl directory made it to the new remaster. and the files are there. Is the drectory name case sensitive?

The problem was not resolved.

I'm beginning to think it is less a gnu-utils.dsl issue than an APT issue.

On the new remaster the ICACLient (/usr/lib/ICAClient/wfcmgr) will start and I can setup a connection. The client will not connect to the application, however. You hit the start button and nothing happens.

If I then right click the desktop, select APPS, TOOLS and Enable Apt, I see the dpkg packages being retrieved - or what ever that is.

I then open a command window as superuser and issue these two commands:

apt-get updateapt-get install cpio libawx6

Those two items get installed, and the client then works.

For some reason the remaster is not Enabling Apt.

Is there a way to put those three commands (Enable Apt, apt-get update, and apt-get install cpio libxaw6) into a script that runs automatically when the remastered CD boots?

Or, am I missing something else?

A second issue is how to make any changes to the desktop (Ikons added or deleted) persist to the remaster?

Thanks

Posted by meo on Dec. 23 2006,10:52

Hi again SCOEIT!

I think you should try another way of remastering. Namely the one explained on page 62. To boot without icons just add the following at the boot prompt: dsl noicons and thats it. I don't have time to explain more right now but I'll get back to you later on.

Have fun remastering SCOEIT,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 23 2006,19:00

Meo:

I looked at the How to on Page 62, and don't really understand how that would preserve the ICAClient install to the remaster.

However, I'll be patient and wait for more details when you have time - I appreciate that you are willing to help at all.

As for the ikons - its not that I want to start without icons - its that I added an icon to the ICAClient, and it does not persist to the remaster.

I've been searching the forum and have some ideas about how I will test that.

Thanks,

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 24 2006,23:04

Meo:

I've continued to work on this, and have had a little success - which I'll detail below. In the process I have figured out how to keep my desktop icons persistent through a reboot and a couple of other things. I'm still having issues with apt-get. I just posted this in the "Apt-get" forum:

Quote

I'm new to Linux, and struggling.

I need to run /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfcmgr after boot from a remastered CD

To do this after reboot I have to Enable Apt.

I'm doing this automatically by putting 'sudo dkpg-restore' in the .xinitrc file

I also have to run these two commands from a shell:'apt-get update''apt-get install cpio libxaw6'

I've tried to get these two commands to run automatically on reboot by putting them in the .xinitrc as well, without effect.

How can I get these commands to run automatically after reboot?

Thanks,

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Posted by meo on Dec. 27 2006,20:20

Hello again SCOEIT!

I've been pondering over your problem a lot but I feel very confused about it. Why? Because all things you install or enable should stay there when making a remaster. It always has been that way unless a mistake has been made. If I get any helpful ideas I will get back to you in this thread but for now I just don't know how to be of any help. I hope all works out for you.

Have fun remastering DSL; a wonderful Linux distro,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 27 2006,20:53

Meo:

I also don't know why - you aren't the only person that has told me that putting it in the MyDSL directory on the root of the remastered CD should load it automatically. Two days ago my frustration was really building - which was good as it forced me to spend a lot of time digging through this forum and others. I finally achieved a break through.

That shell script made it to the remaster, and would allow Citrix to run once invoked. I was very specific in specifing the location of the archive because I learned that was the only way to ensure the script found the right files.

I finally tried calling that script with this command:

Quote

bash /KNOPPIX/opt/icaprep

which i placed after the dillo and torsmo commands in the .xinitrc file.

On the 15th remaster SUCCESS! the remaster starts, and I can run the citrix app with no issues.

In the process I learned how to make my desktop icons and my citrix connection settings persist across the remaster as well.

All in all, although frustrating, I have developed much more insight into how this OS works.

I will now use this working remaster that boots as the default DSL user to try creating a third restricted user and edit the appropriate file to cause the next remaster to start as that user.

When finished my hope is to have a CD I can plug into a student computer that does one thing and one thing only - start the citrix client on the only connection allowed for the students.

You will certainly see more questions on how to do that on the board as I proceed. For the moment though, I GOT THE ICA CLIENT TO WORK ON A REMASTER FINALLY.

Thanks

Posted by roberts on Dec. 27 2006,23:18

Glad to hear you are having some success. But your approach is quite unique. It is what is confusing to many. Typically a in remaster the deb packages are installed and therefore no need to have to download or even use dpkg-restore or any deb -i commands.

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 28 2006,00:34

Quote (roberts @ Dec. 27 2006,16:18)

Glad to hear you are having some success. But your approach is quite unique. It is what is confusing to many. Typically a in remaster the deb packages are installed and therefore no need to have to download or even use dpkg-restore or any deb -i commands.

Roberts:

That was my understanding as well - the whole thing is confusing. I'm sure it is something simple stemming from my inexperience with Linux. I'm sure there is something I failed to understand or do correctly.

If you are at all interested I can post the remaster .iso on my web site so you could look at it.

Thanks to you and Meo for the help!

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 28 2006,18:52

Meo and Roberts:

As indicated in my last post - it was a simple issue. Having spent the better part of 10 days fighting with this, I have a much better understanding of the operating system than I did. I'm still a rank rookie, but things are beginning to make more sense.

With that in mind I went back through the first post in this thread from MEO step-by-step, comparing what it says with what I did, and discovered where I went wrong.

Followed by the instruction to install any packages I wanted. In my case I have all my source files in /source, not KNOPPIX, and I was so new I did not understand that I needed to run the "dpkg-restore", "apt-get update" and "apt-get install cpio libxaw6"

Then remaster. When I reread it this morning it made sense and this remaster works fine without any kludgy shell scripts.

As for locking down the desktop, it occured to me if I go to .xtdesktop on the remaster and strip out all the icons on the remaster, then edit the rxvt.menu file in /ext/X11 so that it is empty, when the remaster starts the user won't be able to do anything except run the citrix ICA client - the only app on the desktop.

I'm testing that next.

Part of the problem of being new to an operating system is that you often don't even know how to ask the right questions.

Thanks for your help and unending patience with my inexperience.

Posted by roberts on Dec. 28 2006,19:04

Very good. Glad to see you are on the right track. Your project is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 28 2006,19:25

I'm on a statewide list serv for other IT types in schools and counties in CA. When I started this I asked for input from all my counterparts, hoping someone else already had it working.

Basically I was told "We've been trying to do this, it's a great idea - hope you're successful, and if you make it work we want it."

So, I'm not the only one who owes you thanks.

By the way - I just finished the last remaster with the stripped down desktop - works like a charm - the settings were in /etc/skel/.fluxbox/menu. Only left the ability to change desktop resolution.

Thanks again.

Now I have to sit down and organize my notes so I can post this to my web site for my counterparts to use - I plan on letting them start with my version that already has the Citrix client working - all they'll have to do is change thier appsrv.ini settings.

Posted by meo on Dec. 29 2006,10:43

Hi there SCOEIT!

I'm glad things worked out for you. If you make a HOWTO of the remaster you made you're more than welcome to post it in this thread. It might be useful to other DSL users too.

Keep on having fun out there,meo

Posted by SCOEIT on Dec. 31 2006,03:33

I did - Thanks to you and others.

Have a great new year!

SCOEIT

Posted by JoeOldendick on Jan. 01 2007,15:47

I have read a good portion of these posts and am still reading, but is it my understanding that it would be possible to take a harddrive installed...and make a live cd out of it that would include CRON schedules and such?

I have completed and tested picture frame scripts..so that I can mount the laptop screen into a frame and hang it on the wall, but before I rip the laptop apart I would like to be able to be able to CLONE the drive so that if something were to go wrong I could lay it down on a 2nd computer and begin from there.

Ghost doesn't seem to work..so this remastering looks good.

This is what I want to do:

Create a cd that contains all of my scripts, cron schedules, installed programs. I want to be able to take this cd and put it into a 2nd laptop and boot up and then click "install to harddrive".

Am I anywhere close to understanding this stuff?

Posted by DugDaThug on Jan. 02 2007,01:22

JoeOldendick, Meo & Roberts,

Hi... I'm new (and stink at linux) but have the best intentions to get 'in the game'. At the moment, I'm 'eating like a bird' in preparation for 'sh!#ing like an elephant' on my project.

I, like JoeOldendick, am in the process of making a digital picture frame for my dear mom! And, much like Joe, I'm trying to figure out a few things surrounding 'remastering'.

My question is simply put:

What can you do with 'mkmydsl' that can't be done with Meo's 'remastering how-to's'? And visa-versa?

Any insight into the theoretical differences in these two methods would be greatly appreciated.

Side note /question to JoeOldendick -- would you like to compare notes / be able to answer some questions?

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere in this thread... but here's some info:mkmydsl just remakes the .iso including any mydsl extensions you want to be autoloaded upon cd boot.remastering takes the whole KNOPPIX image and recreates it - essentially the base dsl image.

Posted by meo on Jan. 09 2007,08:56

Hi all remaster fans!

I just made a remaster of DSL 3.2 RC3 and it seems to work just fine. I used the principles of the HOWTO on page 62 (just omit zlib it is not needed) doing this remaster.

Have fun Y'all,meo

Posted by loupdesteppes on Jan. 10 2007,16:07

As far as i undesrtand you meo, as soon as there is a new damnsmall version you make a kind of remaster of it. I try to understand why, because if you have remaster something, after that you have only to make updates, and not start all from the beginning.I mean, i have remastered a 2.something and im still working with it which is perhaps today a 3. something or maybe a 4.something after updates.

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 10 2007,17:26

If you have your remaster process automated, at least partially, it's a small matter to apply the same process to future releases of DSL. The "updates" you mentioned would be simpler only if you run DSL as a fully-writable and persistent harddrive install. Remastering DSL is necessary if you want to keep your personal changes to the base system persistent while also keeping up with improvements to DSL on a live cd or frugal system.

Posted by loupdesteppes on Jan. 10 2007,22:02

No Mikshaw, i dont have dsl installed on my hard drive..i just have the uncompressed KNOPPIX file. If i need some new tools or updates, I make as chroot an apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, and apt-get install for the new tools I need and I compress and burn the new iso..thats it ! all the system is automaticaly updated, changed with my personnal changes if i want some(via etc/skel/.. for ex.) and added with the appz i need and i have installed as chroot. No need to download and work with a new release. I have never cheked but im pretty sure that some and probably a lot of my files and tools are in a newer release than they are into the last damnsmall release. Anyway, i update some pkgs with debian testing.

Posted by mrchips on Jan. 21 2007,18:02

I have successfully remastered. But i want to do so by removing firefox. I dont need it and i could do with recovering every MB i can to squeeze back to 50MB.

I assumed i would remove the /usr/local/firefox directory from my 'source' before doing a mkisofs to create the compressed KNOPPIX image. But, if /usr/local/firefox is missing i get

mkisofs: Error: '(NULL_POINTER)' and 'source/rr_moved' have the same Rock Ridge name 'rr_moved'mkisofs: Unable to sort directory

anyone know what is going on?

Posted by meo on Jan. 23 2007,18:02

Hi mrchips!

Just remove the directory rr_moved from the source dir and it should work. I've done it after removing firefox. Removing firefox could also be done before copying everything to the source directory. Mikshaw posted this somewhere a while ago: sudo rm -rf /usr/local/{,bin/}firefox and this is what I have done to remove firefox. This will cause some complaints during bootup, but if you check out /etc/init.d/mkunion and delete or comment out the bottom few lines that refer to firefox, there will be no more complaints about firefox during bootup. This you can do after copying everything to the source directory. Open a shell as root and give this command: #beaver source/etc/init.d/mkunion and make the desired changes and save them. OK that's it!

Have fun all remastering fans,meo

Posted by oznozz on Jan. 23 2007,19:20

Hello again,

I've gotten a pretty good customized version working.

I now have a somewhat difficult question :

Is there a way to prevent (or at least significantly obfuscate) hard drive access from the live CD?

I'd like to distribute some customized CDs to high school students as a learning tool, and I really don't want them to be able to intentionally or unintentionally use the disk to trash files on a hard drive.

Thanks,oznozz

Posted by mrchips on Jan. 26 2007,18:20

Removing dpkg and apt-get database:After adding/removing packages i want to remove again the dpkg and apt caches before creating the iso, so as to recover the same back.

is it as simple as removing var/lib/apt and var/lib/dpkg or a bit more to it than than??

Posted by eeffoC on Feb. 02 2007,21:19

I just made a remaster of DSL 3.2 to add XFree86+config-file (for touchpanel support) and acpid following the instructions on page 59.

Worked on the first attempt!!

Just wanted to thank everyone who helped to keep this thread up to date - nice work *thumbs up*!

Posted by beakmyn on Feb. 16 2007,15:59

Just thought I'd add my remastering method as it's slightly different. Mine is set-up for my Digital Picture Frame. While some effort has been made to slim it down it's not neccesary. I have my pictureframe set up to be a frugal install on /hda1 with pictures on hda3

It seems to reason that instead of /mnt/cloop/* you could use /mnt/hda1/* perhaps which I believe would give you a source of your current DSL hard-drive install?

Posted by CyberCod on Mar. 06 2007,12:19

Hi everyone,

I installed DSL on a very old laptop (133Mhz 32MBram 1.6GHz HD)and customized it for my co-worker's daughter (she's 11).

The whole process took over a week to get just right.

Now I'd like to make some sort of restore disk, but I got no real clue how to go about it. I don't want a live disk remaster, really because the machine will barely run the original DSL live disk.

I'm hoping I can make a bootable CD (there is no floppy) that can just come up to a Yes/No question and either restore everything, or not.

Simply put, it would need to extract an archive from the CD of all the current folders, with permissions and ownership intact.

Maybe two other options would be to format hda1, and install grub. But thats it.

No live, no nada. Just those three options.

Anyone have any ideas?

I'm trying to make it as easy on the girl as possible. The total install, with all added options, software and extra backgrounds etc is 196MB. Its running good, i'm just worried that she'll do something bad to it.

The install seems very susceptible to errors created by power loss, and the laptop battery is so old its useless.

So come on guys, help turn a child onto linux and away from the evil M$!

----EDIT----I'm checking into using PartImage's SystemRescueCD, and customizing it, but its says ram requirements are high, so if anyone has a better idea, I'm still all ears.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 06 2007,17:56

cybercod, I suggest for you to open up another thread, since it does not have to do with this topic.What you probably want is "re-imaging" a harddrive ('dd' is a popular tool for this).

Posted by CyberCod on Mar. 06 2007,23:56

Ok, thanks. I apologize for posting in the wrong place, this was just the closest thing i found to what I was talking about and I didn't want to start a new thread if this was where the question belonged.

I'll search out some info on dd and post a new thread if I can't figure out what to do.

Posted by bluemonkey on Mar. 07 2007,22:01

Hi,

I'm trying to remaster DSL-N RC4 as per the instructions scattered throughout this topic.

Thankyou..! That did the trick, and i eventually found a reference to it on the DSL wiki..

Now my last problem..

I want to use the 'jwm' desktop manager rather than 'fluxbox'. However no matter what i do, it keeps using 'fluxbox'.

I've added "desktop=jwm" to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst located in the source directory.I've edited /home/dsl/.desktop to "wm: jwm" in the source/etc/skel directory before creating the compressed image..

I've added files and modified existing files (such as .xinitrc) in the source/etc/skel directory that are reflected in the remastered image. Yet the .desktop file that resides in /home/dsl on the remastered image still says "wm: fluxbox".

If i enter "dsl desktop=jwm" at the boot: prompt during startup, then it will use jwm and the /home/dsl/.desktop file (i know it resides in memory) correctly shows "wm: jwm".

How can i ensure that the modified (ie "wm: jwm") .desktop file makes it into the remastered image file, rather than the default (ie "wm: fluxbox") .desktop file as i don't want to have to type anything at the boot: prompt during startup.

Thanks for any help you can provide, and for your quick reply on my previous post..!

Posted by roberts on Mar. 08 2007,15:53

The default desktop is specified in /etc/init.d/dsl-config.

Around line 240 depending on your version of DSL

case "$DESKTOP" in fluxbox|jwm) ;; *) DESKTOP="fluxbox"; ;; esac

change to:

case "$DESKTOP" in fluxbox|jwm) ;; *) DESKTOP="jwm"; ;; esac

Posted by zmsc1 on Mar. 08 2007,18:05

Hi All,

I've just joined the ranks of DSL remasterers, on a mission like SCOEIT's back around Xmas. I want to remaster a version that starts rdesktop and only runs that. I've spent all day reading through this topic, and I think I roughly understand it. But when it comes to actually remastering, I've hit a silly problem, so I hope someone can advise. I've got through mkisofs successfully (I think) and now need to copy the files with

cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source

But the copy insists on confirming every file. And there are far too many to confirm every one with Y and return! I've tried adding the -f switch, but it makes no difference.

Ideas very welcome!

TIAStuart

Posted by zmsc1 on Mar. 09 2007,11:07

Quote (zmsc1 @ Mar. 08 2007,13:05)

Hi All,

I've just joined the ranks of DSL remasterers, on a mission like SCOEIT's back around Xmas. I want to remaster a version that starts rdesktop and only runs that. I've spent all day reading through this topic, and I think I roughly understand it. But when it comes to actually remastering, I've hit a silly problem, so I hope someone can advise. I've got through mkisofs successfully (I think) and now need to copy the files with

cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source

But the copy insists on confirming every file. And there are far too many to confirm every one with Y and return! I've tried adding the -f switch, but it makes no difference.

Ideas very welcome!

TIAStuart

Answered my own question! It shows I'm still a noobie at the command line, the answer is

cp -Rp --reply=yes /KNOPPIX/* source

And I think the reason is that though cp's default is to overwrite without confirmation, if recursion is set, the default changes!

Posted by meo on April 03 2007,17:25

Hi all remaster fans! Here comes an updated HOWTO used to remaster DSL-3.3.

With the newer versions of DSL there also has come new possibilities to make remasters. Personally I made the following type of remaster from an usb pendrive. I unzipped DSL-Embedded 3.3 directly to the drive. Then I created a mydsl directory containing gnu-utils.unc and gcc1-with-libs.unc and booted the drive with the following cheatcodes: norestore and xsetup. Once up and running it is possible to compile source code and in this example I'll use bcrypt. Copy the unzipped directory to home/dsl. It can be found on the bcrypt site. Just google for bcrypt and you'll find it. Here comes the HOWTO:

Install-and-Compiling-RAM-Remaster-HOWTO

#cd bcrypt-1.1#make#make install#cd ..

Now you can delete the bcrypt directory (I usually use Emelfm) and make the directories

Now you have the both unc-files and bcrypt inside the KNOPPIX file. So just by removing the old KNOPPIX file from your usb pendrive and replacing it with the new you will have the capabilities of compiling source code and encrypting files with bcrypt. So the principle is that unc-files that are mounted will get transferred to the source dir when you do the:

#cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source

This is the way I've done it but it can probably be done in other ways but it really is an easy way to make a remaster. This works with unc-files but not with uci-files because the uci-files are selfcontained and doesn't get transferred to the source directory.

As always have fun remastering DSL,meo

Posted by un-master on April 17 2007,22:27

Hi all, long-time DSL user, first post. I am trying to remaster DSL, but istead of adding DSL extensions, I would like to be able to use apt-get, and install kernelsource to compile a kernel with changes.

I am working with DSL 3.3 (non-embedded) and I chose that because I saw that apt-get was easily enabled now. I haven't looked into DSL-N that closely, but 2.4.26 kernel is fine. Another important aspect of this remaster is that I want it to be as small as possible, many packages will be removed.

I am working in VMware with adequate memory and HD reserved. I have an ext2 partition for /source and /newcd created. So far, I am booting in VMware directly from the current.iso with the TORAM option, then copy everything from KNOPPIX/* to /source, then I

Code Sample

chroot /path/to/drive/source

then cd / (which would be the chrooted /source path).

Since I am in command line only, I can (as root) run the desktop menu choice to enable apt with

Code Sample

dpkg-restore

and enable GNU Utilities with:

Code Sample

gnu-utils-restore

I can apt-get several things happily, but one thing I need requires a newer libc6 than the archived/Woody repository.

I can run deselect and easily add the repos for stable, which is switching distro versions. The puzzling part is that I can do all of this (and apt-get install from the upgraded version) but I cannot do it in chroot. I get an error about 'need to temporarily remove e2fsprg (that is from memory, I can't access the exact message now), use Force LoopBreak to do it anyway.

After some searching, I determine this is what it wants before the install (or could put it in /etc/apt/apt.conf):

Code Sample

apt-get -o APT::Force-LoopBreak=yes

So then it runs and actually is looking pretty good, until the end where it gives me this:

Searching for this error, I see many people getting it when trying to do the initial chroot, and don't have the partition mounted read-write. That is not my problem, because both root and chroot root can write to there with no problems.

Suggestions? I would also like to know how to enable the mydslPanel.lua from command line, I tried exporting the X display to localhost:0 and then running it, but it did not appear to work (I need that to download kernelsource, though I have it saved locally already). I have seen other posts mentioning remastering from a HD install, and wonder if that may be better for what I am trying to do.

This is puzzling, because I could read and write to it before, but mounting it with the -rw switch let me continue with apt-get. There is still more testing to be done, but this may have been the problem with seeming to need Force-LoopBreak=yes.

I now seem to have a DSL 3.3 that can apt-get from Debian Stable while chrooted. This could be a problem in the future as the packages and repos change, but if I can get the desired things working, and the unwanted things removed I hope to get it back to an ISO that will not need anything further changed.

Now to see if I can put the pieces back together and get it to boot.

Posted by un-master on April 18 2007,05:08

While doing Knoppix remasters, it is often needed to mount /proc. In reading further on this, I saw it mentioned that if you cannot apt-get then /proc may need to be mounted. I have not seemed to need to, but the final remaster may tell me more.

While trying to run progs (I am still in chroot) I also tried to run ps and grep for my app, and I got this message:

I mounted /proc as instructed above, and I could then grep for my program running.

If I get this going, I promise I will clean up all the intermediate steps, and make it nice and neat!

Does anyone have any suggestions on how load load the kernelsource and gcc1-with-libs dsl files locally (that will work in chroot)?

edit: mydsl-load /path/to/extension

Posted by loupdesteppes on April 19 2007,08:44

un-master have a look on my way of remaster damsmall....maybe it can help you....if you need some added informations, let me know...best regards

Posted by un-master on April 20 2007,03:43

Thanks, loupdesteppes. I had seen your guide, but didn't know how many differences were between 2.2 and 3.3 I am doing your Method 2, I think. One thing you did that I did not try was dpkg --force-overwrite -i /

I actually have it working well to this point (my generated ISO actually boots!), except that I have not compiled a kernel for a couple of years, and I need to for this project (I need to add some patches to the kernel).

I got the 2.4.26 kernel, do you know if I have to apply the knoppix-kernel.patch before I can compile?

Code Sample

bash-2.05b# patch -v -p1 -d linux-2.4.26 < knoppix-kernel.patchcan't find file to patch at input line 3Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?The text leading up to this was:--------------------------|--- linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c.orig 2002-10-04 01:02:25.000000000 +0200|+++ linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c 2002-10-04 01:03:24.000000000 +0200--------------------------File to patch:

I can run make menuconfig, I am getting acquainted again with that. There is a lot of information from July 2006 < here. >

thank you.

Posted by un-master on April 20 2007,04:07

Since I am wanting to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I hate to start with a make menuconfig and have to guess at what all the existing DSL kernel parameters are. After some searching, I came across sysctl, it can read and write parameters from a running kernel. Fortunately, it seems to be present and working!

Code Sample

bash-2.05b# sysctl -aerror: unable to open directory '/proc/sys/'

This was my clue (I have so few of them) to mount /proc:

Code Sample

mount -t proc none /proc

This produced a huge list of kernel parameters! I won't post them here. I wonder if I can pipe that output to a configuration file, so I won't have to simply step through each one and enter it....

EDIT: easy enough to pipe it to a text file anyway. I tried this and it worked:

Code Sample

sysctl -a > sysctl.txt

Looking through it, it has lots and lots of settings for net.ipv4.conf.eth0 (5 pages) and dev.cdrom.info and nothing about soundcards, modules, etc. I checked it on a running Fedora Core 4 and Debian Sid systems, and they have similar output. Can I just run through make menuconfig plugging in values from this? That would be nice, less trial and error.

Posted by Juanito on April 20 2007,07:44

Quote

bash-2.05b# patch -v -p1 -d linux-2.4.26 < knoppix-kernel.patchcan't find file to patch at input line 3Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?The text leading up to this was:--------------------------|--- linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c.orig 2002-10-04 01:02:25.000000000 +0200|+++ linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c 2002-10-04 01:03:24.000000000 +0200--------------------------File to patch:

This happens to me sometimes - if you enter "/usr/src/linux-2.4.26/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c" after "file to patch:" things should work. You could also try a symlink /usr/src/linux --> /usr/src/linuz-2.4.26

Quote

Since I am wanting to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I hate to start with a make menuconfig and have to guess at what all the existing DSL kernel parameters are.

If you use make menuconfig to load the knoppix .config file and then exit and save it, you will have the default DSL parameters. It is relatively easy to edit the .config file with beaver if you want to customise a kernel to your particular needs.

Maybe the post on a dummy USB stick compile < here > might be useful.

Posted by un-master on April 20 2007,23:43

Hi Juanito, thanks for the reply. Yes, I have been following your thread very carefully. After I posted last, I tried and was able to patch the kernel (I had a symlink created) with no errors. I will continue on it tonight!

EDIT: I had apt-gotten the Debian Stable gcc-2.95 and had a problem finding it in the DSL extensions (I tried several mirrors) I found it in Google's cache however, so I will continue with it.Thanks!

Posted by un-master on April 23 2007,01:52

I have been able to get through all the kernel compile steps with no errors, the next step is to see if it will boot!

I do not think that I commented on this yet, I have been using < ISOMASTER > to rebuild the final ISO. You still need to manually build the KNOPPIX image with the OS and all the applications, but ISOMASTER is a convenient GUI way to repackage the KNOPPIX image into the ISO. I generate an ISO, and then test it in VMware to avoid burning CDs. A useful virtual machine to boot directly to an ISO image is available at < vmwarez.com >.

Thanks to everyone who posted remastering information (there is a lot of it), it has been a big help.

Posted by un-master on April 25 2007,13:45

I have run into new problems now. I have been able to generate ISOs with added applications. When generating the ISO, the mkisofs command always has been failing with a KILLED message. Why this is confusing, it that it would generate a KNOPPIX image, that when inserted into the ISO would work fine.

Last night I was experimenting with compiling kernel (still not really making changes yet, just learning) and now mkisofs fails with a KILLED message and the generated KNOPPIX image is zero bytes. I cannot find any logs with any information in them.

This does not make sense to me, does anyone have any suggestions for this?

EDIT: I am back, I can display the exact mkisofs command that I am using:

Hi meo, thanks for the reply. Actually, I did have a -R (uppercase) in there, I entered it wrong in the post. Do you have any suggestions? I am working through all my steps again tonight, trying to document them better.

thx

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on April 26 2007,06:30

"create_compresses+fs" should also be "create_compressed_fs"

Posted by un-master on April 26 2007,13:47

Oops, again that was a typo in the post and not what I was running. I did use create_compressed_fs. My problem with that post is that I am using VMware, and I do not have VMware Tools installed, and as such I cannot copy/paste between virtual machines. I entered the command in the post by hand. I edited/corrected the post above.

Posted by un-master on May 02 2007,05:20

I'm still working on this (but not posting every 5 hours) and it is going well. My problem with mkisofs went away, when I retraced my steps and recreated the dev environment. mkisofs creates a KNOPPIX image that I insert into the ISO image (using < ISOMASTER >) and it will boot. The programs I added with apt-get install are present and run.

I patched the kernel with the < netfilter patch utility > just fine, and saw added choices in the kernel config, Networking Options -> Netfilter Configuration. I can compile a test kernel and the config runs with no errors, I get a new vmlinuz-2.4.26 image in /boot.

I was a little confused on using make mrproper before the above steps, as that seemed to remove the old .config file (I hoped to start with the existing DSL kernel config, then remove things).

My problem now seems to be installing iptables from source. I had originally installed iptables with apt-get, but the www.netfilter.org docs say that you should compile it against the new kernel image after it's patched. I removed iptables with apt-get remove, got the iptables source and tar -zxvf in /usr/src. The www.netfilter.org instructions say:Once your new kernel is installed, you can go ahead and compile and install the ``iptables'' package, from the `userspace/' directory as follows :# make && make installMy vmlinuz-2.4.26 is in /boot, so I proceed as suggested in the INSTALL file:

This make: cc: error is what is puzzling me now. I think it means that gcc is not installed (or perhaps more accurately, it cannot find it). gcc is installed, and should be available:

Code Sample

# which gcc/usr/bin/gcc

What am I missing here? It looks like everything should be in place for this to work.

Once this is working, should I just point the default entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst to the /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 image, or will I need to make changes in /boot/minirt24.gzthx

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 02 2007,05:50

I thought DSL was netfilter/iptables capable out-of-box ?

Anyways, you can link cc to gcc

Code Sample

# cd /usr/bin# ln -s gcc cc

or probably set CC=gcc

Code Sample

# export CC=gcc

though this might seem a bit off-topic.

Posted by un-master on May 02 2007,06:50

Great, thanks for the tip! I wondered if I should have to symlink something, since it was there but not finding it.

I am wanting to add some custom kernel modules to iptables, so it looks like I need to compile that as well. And apt-get install was so easy...

I will try it tomorrow, it's late and I have to sleep.Thanks again.

Posted by Juanito on May 02 2007,10:21

Quote

# cd /usr/src/iptables-1.3.6# make KERNEL_DIR=/boot

Maybe you need "./configure --prefix=/usr" after the first line?

Quote

Once this is working, should I just point the default entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst to the /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 image, or will I need to make changes in /boot/minirt24.gz

When the boot process pauses at the DSL "splash" screen, you can just enter "vmlinuz-2.4.26" <cr> where you would normally enter boot options and your new image will load.

Posted by un-master on May 03 2007,01:01

Thanks for the tips guys. Symlinking let me continue. There is no ./configure step to the iptables install, just make && make install. After this is done (no major errors) I generate the ISO files as before, but when I just add vmlinuz-2.4.26 at the prompt, I get "Could not find kernel image: vmlinuz-2.4.26" message.

I can look in my /mnt/sda1/source/boot dir and see the vmlinuz-2.4.6 image. At first I was thinking that I had been too aggressive in cutting unwanted things from the kernel. Then I realized that I am not getting that far, it's not even finding the image.

I half-heartedly tried the fromhd cheatcode a few times, thinking I could perhaps give it the right path. I tried:

Code Sample

dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1

and also tried a few variants, sd0, tried appending /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 to it. I have never used the fromhd cheatcode, perhaps that is intended to be pointed to an ISO image?

I need to back up a few steps and examine what is happening. Thanks again for the help, any further suggestions? If not for the help, I could be doing this for the rest of my life and still not be making progress ;^)

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 03 2007,01:59

fromhd is for the KNOPPIX image. See wiki, etc. for more information.

I haven't booted like what juanito suggested... I would've thought you'd have to change {sys|iso}linux to get that working...And if you use the default paths, I would've assume the kernels would have to be in the same dir.Did you also try editing grub instead?

Posted by un-master on May 03 2007,03:08

I was ready to edit menu.1st and see if that would be a better way, but sending it a cheatcode was an easy thing to try. I think I would have to set up a cheatcode for it. I saw that stuff go by somewhere, was it in isolinux.cfg ? I am upstairs away from the dev machine now, I will go look.

For curiosity, I am also looking through minirt24.gz like this:

Code Sample

gunzip -d minirt24.gzmkdir /mnt/testmount -o loop minirt24 /mnt/test

Juanito, I think I saw in one of your how-tos about mv/renaming the new image to /boot/vmlinuz. That sounds easier than changing grub for me. I have been a LILO kinduva guy for some time, and I am just cold on grub. At this point I am not too interested in trying to maintain multiple kernels to boot from, I just want to get the new one working and default to it.thx

Posted by Juanito on May 03 2007,07:30

Quote

Juanito, I think I saw in one of your how-tos about mv/renaming the new image to /boot/vmlinuz

Yes, but this was a USB boot - I copied the vmlinuz file to the root directory, left everything as-is and then entered vmlinuz at the boot prompt at the bottom of the DSL splash screen.

I don't know if you can do this from a hd install - you might have to edit lilo/grub to point to vmlinuz instead of minirt24.gz

Posted by meo on May 03 2007,07:42

Hi again un-master!

You make me remember when I was fooling around with gentoo a few years ago. I think you can solve your problem this way:

1. Rename the original kernel with mv (I used to append .old to the name)2. Copy your new kernel to the same dir as the original.3. Rename the new kernel so it has the name of the original with mv (if it doesn't already have that of course)4. If everything works you can remove the old kernel with rm.

That's what I used to do when I compiled a new kernel using gentoo and I can't see why it shouldn't work with DSL.

Hope it works out and have fun,meo

Posted by un-master on May 03 2007,23:16

Hi meo,Thanks for the tip. That makes perfect sense in a normal full Linux install. I seem to be too slow however, to recognize the darn default kernel in DSL! Booting a DSL CD with toram cheatcode should put the whole filesystem in RAM, and I can't find a vmlinuz* in there anywhere.

Looking back on my dev environment at /boot/grub/menu.1st there is no reference to vmlinuz either. The default 0 entry starts with:

Code Sample

kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda2

then has some cheatcode parameters, and then ends with:

Code Sample

initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

I see the linux24 file in /boot but if I just point the default entry to /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 I wonder what I will be losing by not using linux24? Easy enough to try it, I suppose.

Also, I have a vmlinuz file that is symlinked to the vmlinuz-2.4.26 image, and they have the same timestamps (I noticed this upon kernel compile). I will try pointing the grub menu just to /boot/vmlinuz

thx

EDIT: OK, after more searching, I see that linux24 is the actual kernel image. I changed the menu.1st to /boot/vmlinuz but it still fails. For reference, it goes through:The initial screen where you can enter cheatcodes, then:

I found that the initlal splash is still trying to load the linux24 kernel, even though I have edited /boot/grub/menu.1st to point to /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 (I can probably use the vmlinuz symlink, but one thing at a time.

I finally found isolinux.cfg full of "default linux24" references. This was extracted from the original ISO file with ISOMASTER in the /boot directory of /mnt/sda1/source. I saved it locally (all ISOMASTER actions are outside of the chroot environment, back in the native Linux environment). Next is to change all linux24 references to vmlinuz-2.4.26 and insert it into the ISO. I then saved off the ISO... and it fails at the initial splash with Could not find kernel image: vmlinuz-2-4.26

But I'm getting different errors now, at least!I will look at it tomorrow, it's late. I can see that using the symlink for vmlinuz in the isolinux.cfg would be much preferred. You could potentially keep compiling kernels without having to also keep editing isolinux.cfg

meo, backtracking a bit, this might all be easier now trying your last suggestion, now that I know what the kernel is named. Perhaps I should just replace/rename vmlinuz-2.4.26 to linux24 and then perhaps could leave more things as they were.

Posted by un-master on May 04 2007,23:48

Now I have changed references in both isolinux.cfg and menu.1st to vmlinuz-2.4.26, I get 'can't find vmlinuz-2.4.26 image'.

I changed both references to the vmlinuz (which is a symlink to vmlinuz-2.4.26) same 'can't find' error.

I reloaded the original isolinux.cfg, mv /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 /boot/linux24. linux24 still retains the symlink to vmlinuz-2.4.26

Now it finds/loads the image, and again fails on:INIT: version 2.78-knoppix booting.

I'm about out of ideas now, where should I look?thx

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 05 2007,02:44

This should really be in another thread IMO (but that's up to you).

Try removing "quiet" from the bootcode args - this will allow kernel messages to be shown during boot.

Posted by prgiorgio on May 11 2007,07:28

Hi guys, i'm searching for an how-to, reading backwards all the 300+ answers is too much time consuming....

thanks(my original post:< hd install remastering topic > )

thank you in advance

Posted by robc on May 23 2007,20:20

Has anyone tried to create a remaster CD that does an automatic installation?

I would like to make a CD that I can just put in the computer, reboot, and the CD will format the harddrive and install dsl without needing any user interface (other than putting in the CD).

I have looked through this thread and found it very useful, I have used the howto on page 56 to do remasters of 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3. But I haven't come across anything with automatic installations.

Any advice would be appreciated

ThanksRob

Posted by un-master on May 23 2007,23:11

I think you could just edit /boot/grub/menu.1st and make the default entry 'dsl 2' (I'm away from it right now, I cannot look at what it's exactly called). Then perhaps just append install to it, and that might be enough.

You will still have to answer the questions about what HD partition to use, etc because that can be very different from machine to machine.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 24 2007,01:35

That would be menu.lst ... and "dsl 2" only boots to runlevel 2, I think you meant 'install' for the menu.

If you really wanted to have things do it automatically, it's just easier to have a backup.tar.gz (or your own) that restores bootlocal.sh (which will contain all of your commands). Then have it reboot after or something.

But this will really only work if you plan on auto deleting and using any hard drives you see...

Posted by robc on May 24 2007,14:54

Thanks you for the replies.

I edited the menu.lst to boot with the "install" command on startup and I edited the frugal_grub.sh so the user input is commented out and declared within the script instead.

This remaster would only be used on a specific system (well, multiple ones but they are identical) and will be installed on compact flash drives, so I would like to minimize the amount of writes for the install and the time for installation since I will be installing it onto around 70 systems.

I like the idea of calling the frugal_grub.sh from a bootlocal.sh that was loaded from a backup, that would be a quick way to handle it.

The biggest problem that I am running into now is partitioning the drive. I will have to read more on fdisk and cfdisk to see what I can do about it.

Any suggestions are welcome.

ThanksRob

Posted by robc on May 30 2007,22:02

I got my remaster to auto-install on boot. I ended up creating my own boot code < using this thread from beakmyn >. Then I edited the menu.lst for the CD to use the bootcode I created. The boot code just runs the installation script that I added to the / directory of the CD. The script formats, partitions, installs dsl, and installs my misc. files. I used the frugal_grub.sh script and declared the necessary variables in the beginning of the script and added the other commands needed for formatting and partitioning and installing my other files.

I ended up using parted to perform the format and partitions since it was quite a bit easier to use and can be completely ran from the command line and is rather small. So the parted.dsl was included in this remaster.

These changes were made after all the .dsl modules were installed to the remaster source. The remaster guide that was used is found here on < Page 56 of this thread by meo > and DSL v3.3 was used.

Other modules included were:XFree86cupsgnu-utilsgtk2-0705setserialxine

Also many packages that I did not need were removed < using this thread from mikshaw >.

I hope this post is useful to someone.

Thank you for the help Rob

Posted by meo on July 03 2007,19:51

Hello guys!

I just made a remaster of DSL 3.4 and it works like a charm. Thanks to Robert for making bcrypt a part of the original DSL. That saves me from compiling it into the remaster (or using the extension).

Keep on having fun with DSL,meo

Posted by JohnnyH on July 13 2007,10:34

REMASTERED dsl-*-syslinux.iso WON'T BOOT ON SOME BIOS (?)

Having some antique machines, I decided to investigate the syslinux version.As dowmloaded, dsl-3.4-syslinux.iso (and dsl-3.3-syslinux.iso) booted up nicely (both as a live CD and with the ISO image running in VMware Player)

... so I want to remaster the ISO to include extension files, but the re-master won't boot in this machine (Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ motherboard), whether as a CD or in VMware Player.The re-mastered live CD gets as far as displaying:-

To minimise variability in the investigation the files in newcd are exactly as unpacked from the downloaded ISO - no additions or changes.BTW the GA-6VXE7+ , which is my main machine, has never had any problem with booting re-mastered isolinux versions.

Has anybody else come across this sort of problem ?

Posted by meo on Aug. 29 2007,07:44

Hello JohnnyH!

I'm sorry that I adress your problem after such a long time but I've had my hands full so to speak. I think the problem lies in making the iso-file the wrong way. I think this would be the right way to go about it:#mkisofs –no-pad –l –r –J –no-emul-boot –boot-load-size 4 –boot-info-table –b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin –c boot/isolinux/boot.cat –hide-rr-moved –o mydsl.iso newcd

This you can find on page 56 in this thread.

Have fun remastering,meo

Posted by JohnnyH on Aug. 29 2007,10:22

Hi meo, thanks for your reply The mkisofs statement that you give above is for the 'normal' (isolinux) version, but in this case I was using the syslinux version, and the appropriate mkisofs statement for that. The strange thing is that it booted OK on one machine and not the other (all my machines boot the isolinux version OK) So I guess it can be designated as a BIOS compatibility issue FWIW

Posted by meo on Sep. 04 2007,07:47

Hello guys!

I just made a remaster of DSL 4.0 rc3 and it works just fine. I will get back to you with the complete HOWTO as soon as I can.

Have fun out there in cyberspace,meo

Posted by meo on Sep. 06 2007,14:45

Hello everybody!

I promised in my last post that I would post a complete remastering HOWTO so here it comes:

RAM-Remastering HOWTO for DSL

With the newer versions of DSL there also has come new possibilities to make remasters. Personally I made the following type of remaster from a cd. Then I created a mydsl directory containing gnu-utils.unc and gcc1-with-libs.unc (I keep this mydsl dir on my harddrive where DSL looks for it) and booted the cd with the following cheatcodes: norestore and xsetup.

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode.

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Sep. 20 2007,12:26

Hi Y'all!

I've made a remastering of DSL 3.4.3 according to a part of the HOWTO above. The only thing that doesn't work as it did before is the changing of styles (at least in fluxbox). Otherwise everything is great.

Have fun out there wherever you are,meo

Posted by meo on Oct. 09 2007,12:15

Hello Remasteringfans!

I did a remaster of DSL 3.4.4 a few hours ago and it works fine. Now the bootcodes "noicons" and "noswap" can be used without spoiling the torsmo monitor (in DSL 3.4.3 that was not possible). I haven't tried it out so thoroughly up to now but it seems to work fine. It has the same problem though that the previous version had that styles doesn't change the wallpaper but that can be done with the wallpaper program.

As always have fun out there,meo

Posted by meo on Oct. 24 2007,11:17

Hi remasterfans!

I just did a remaster of the new DSL 4.0 but I had some problems since this version have a different approach to certain functions. It worked allright but not to my satisfaction so I'm using DSL 3.3 which work the way I want it to. DSL 4.0 seems to aim at live-cd users and I prefer to use DSL from a CF card in an PCMCIA adaptor. But I'll explore the structure of DSL 4.0 to see if I can make it work the way I want it to.

As always I hope you have fun,meo

Posted by meo on Nov. 20 2007,09:24

Hello again remasteringfans!

I've just made a remaster of DSL 4.1RC2 and it works like a charm. There are some differences from previous remasters that has to be taken into consideration but I'll adress that in a later post since I'm kind of in a hurry right now.

As always have fun out there,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 13 2007,00:54

Hi all remaster-fans out there!

I've gathered some information of the structure of the 4.x series of DSL and I will post a Ram-remastering HOWTO at the end of this post. There are no drastic changes when it comes to making the remaster itself but if you are using dsl-embedded there are some drastic changes when it comes to how it can be used and work without snags. It works well on my Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB usb stick but with my 2 GB Sandisk Cruzer Titanium some problems occur. DSL looks twice in the mydsl directory (if you have one) and the optional directory inside the latter. And if you have a lot of extensions in the optional directory it takes a lot of time and you will also end up with two entries of these in the menu. If you can live with these snags there is no problem. So here comes the new Ram-Remaster HOWTO:

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

As you can see the only change is the location of the backgrounds (if you want to add some; I have a lot of them)..

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Dec. 13 2007,00:59

Hi all remaster-fans out there!

I've gathered some information of the structure of the 4.x series of DSL and I will post a Ram-remastering HOWTO at the end of this post. There are no drastic changes when it comes to making the remaster itself but if you are using dsl-embedded there are some drastic changes when it comes to how it can be used and work without snags. It works well on my Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB usb stick but with my 2 GB Sandisk Cruzer Titanium some problems occur. DSL looks twice in the mydsl directory (if you have one) and the optional directory inside the latter. And if you have a lot of extensions in the optional directory it takes a lot of time and you will also end up with two entries of these in the menu. If you can live with these snags there is no problem. So here comes the new Ram-Remaster HOWTO:

With the newer versions of DSL there also has come new possibilities to make remasters. Personally I made the following type of remaster from a cd. Then I created a mydsl directory containing gnu-utils.unc and gcc1-with-libs.unc (I keep this mydsl dir on my harddrive where DSL looks for it) and booted the cd with the following cheatcodes: norestore and xsetup.

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode.

Have fun everybody,meo

The only thing that has changed is the location of the backgrounds (if you want to add some; I have a lot of them)..

Have fun everybody,meo

Posted by meo on Jan. 02 2008,20:03

Hello everybody!

Just as I got the hang of how the new version of DSL was setup it was changed again. If I didn't know better, I would almost think that Robert intentionally is making it harder to remaster DSL. But I'm sure that it isn't so. Anyways I'm back to info-gathering again to see the best possible way to remaster the newer versions of DSL. So have patience, I'll be back!

Have fun,meo

Posted by meo on Mar. 24 2008,20:13

Hi Y'all!

No, I haven't kicked the bucket (yet at least). I made a programming remaster of the latest version of the 3.x series and it seems working well. Not as stable as the 3.3 version I usually uses but that is just an impression after using if for a little while. When it comes to the 4.x series I haven't made too much progress (maybe just because I don't like it as much as the 3.x series; it seems less stable to me) so any input regarding this is very welcome.

Have fun out there, wherever you may be,meo

Posted by meo on April 23 2008,04:47

Hello again Y'all!

I've done a remastering of the new DSL 4.3 that turned out really good and I thought I would share the procedure with you, so here it comes;

HOWTO Remaster DSL 4.3 in RAM

RAM-Remastering HOWTO for DSLMaking a remaster suitable for compiling sourcecode and debugging

Download the following extensions to home/dslflex-bison-libtool.dslgnu-utils.dslgcc1-with-libs.dslgdb-6.8.tar.gz (The GNU debugger in sourcecode) Untar gdb in emelfm and copy the directory to source/home/dsl

Go through and copy wanted things to source#cp -Rp /mnt/hda1/backgrounds/* source/opt/.backgrounds#cp -Rp /mnt/hda1/styles/* source/usr/share/fluxbox/styles Make sure that the rootCommand in the style begins with xsri and not bsetbg -f as before. And you should know that the backgrounds doesn't scale when you change style as in the 3.xx versions

Copy the iso-file to the partition where you have your favourite cd-burning program (or burn it directly in DSL)#cp mydsl.iso /mnt/hda1

This remaster works very well as far as I know compiling sourcecode and for debugging purposes.

Have fun everybody with this brand new version of DSL,meo

Posted by meo on May 02 2008,11:01

Hi again guys!

This time I just have a little tip (but a good one!) when you make a remaster of DSL. If you are planning of using gtk2 this tip is really worth the effort. I have read the info file of gtk+-2.12.9 by Jason W and there he suggests that a .fonts dir is made in home/dsl containing Truetype fonts. I added this dir to the remaster (my contains 38+ MB of TTF) by copying it to: source/etc/skel. If doing so it will appear in home/dsl when you boot your remaster. Then all that has to be done is documented in the previously mentioned info-file. I'm using it now, with my firefox-2.0.0.14.uci extension and it really is a joy to surf the web since it now is using really good looking fonts. The only drawback is that the gtk+-2.12.9.uci extension seems to affect other extensions causing them not to work but firefox, gimp, xmms and openoffice are not affected and those are the programs I usually use. So if it is the same with you, just get on with it!

Have fun out there wherever you may be,meo

Posted by Jason W on May 05 2008,00:21

Hi meo!I am afraid I made the fonts issue more of a hassle than it needs to be with the gtk+-2.12.9 extension. If you place the fonts in /usr/share/fonts, or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, as well as in ~/.fonts, you do not need to issue /opt/gtk+-2.12.9/bin/fc-cache at all. The fonts will be used when you launch a gtk2 program. With a remaster I would just put the fonts in a system directory to not take up RAM. I am presently reworking the gtk2 extension, one thing is symlinking the /etc and /var directories to a writable area. Then you can add other font directories if you want. That cannot be done now, but with next submission. I will update the info file, too.

Also, an interactive menu script to set up gtk2 will be present. As well as a non-interactive one that can be called on in a start up script. Hopefully will make things less tedious whether the extension is auto-loaded or not.

Oh, and may I ask which extensions are not working with this one? I know some of the ones in the gtk2 section do not work with gtk+-2.12.9, due to some missing X libraries that the extensions depend on or some other things. If there are any others, especially non-gtk2 extensions, that get messed up by this one I would like to know and try to remedy it. Thanks, and have a good day.JW

Posted by meo on May 17 2008,03:28

Hi again Jason,

If there is anything I can do to help you when it comes to remastering just let me know and I will do my utmost to help you. So if there is anything don't hesitate to ask but I don't think you'll need any help, I just wanted to post this anyway.

Have a lot of fun remastering DSL,meo

PS As you can see, what I thought would happen really did so and that makes me sure that I took the right decision in the matter DS

Posted by meo on May 18 2008,09:44

Hi all remastering fans!

Just a couple of tweaks this time. If you are using DSL 4.something and like to use fluxbox this might interest you. If you don't want to use a lot of bootcodes to get fluxbox to start from the beginning just save home/dsl/.desktop in your backup after booting DSL with fluxbox. Then DSL will start with fluxbox automatically the next time. If you started with noicons before saving the file in question in your backup it will also start without icons automatically (that's what I do because I don't want any icons on my desktop). Another tweak is with the fluxbox menu. If you (like me) want to have the MyDSL menu item at the top (As it was in the 3.xx versions) instead of Apps you can do the following: open the menu file found in home/dsl/.fluxbox (to see it you can click on the H-button in the left hand corner of emelfm and then just open the .fluxbox directory by clicking on it right click on menu and click on view) and scroll down until you see this line, [include](/opt/.mydsl_menu/fluxbox/menu) and cut it out and paste it just under [begin] (DSL) at the top of the menu and save. Just be sure that you align the beginning of this line with the line below it, [submenu] (Apps) {}. It should lock like this:

[include](/opt/.mydsl_menu/fluxbox/menu) [submenu] (Apps) {}

If you have trouble finding the mydsl line it's located just before the games. Be very careful doing this or, in the worst case, you will end up with a useless fluxbox menu because the effects take place immediately. So better check that it's allright before you add it to the filetool.lst and make a new backup.

Keep on having fun guys,meo

Posted by meo on May 18 2008,17:43

Hi again guys!

I just made a remaster of DSL 4.2.5 trying to compile in GNU debugger into it by the book (using the -prefix option so that it would be installed in the opt directory). But I almost got a heart attack when it had started and grabbed almost a 100 MB of ram. So whatever you do don't do that. Compiling it in the standard way usually takes less than a third part of that amount of ram using the 4.xx series of DSL . So I quickly went back to my remaster of 4.3 and I'm using it now. Just a little warning so you don't have to repeat my mistake. Obviously it takes a little more tweaking to do it "by the book".

Have fun out there with DSL in cyberspace,meo

Posted by lucky13 on May 18 2008,17:54

Quote

I just made a remaster of DSL 4.2.5 trying to compile in GNU debugger into it by the book (using the -prefix option so that it would be installed in the opt directory).

Why would you --prefix=/opt anything in a remaster where it's reasonable to use /usr instead?

Posted by meo on May 18 2008,18:02

I did it so that I could make an extension of the Gnu Debugger at the same time.

EDIT: If you have the official DSL book you can take a look at page 203.

An idea just struck me when I was writing in openoffice (using the new DSL 4.4RC1 "out of the box") and changed a while to browsing the web (read checking out the DSL forum) and saw the fonts used by firefox. A not too nice experience if you are used to truetype fonts. Why not do as Jason W suggested in his first info file to the gtk+-2.12.9 extension, import TT fonts after creating the .fonts directory in home/dsl and then just run $/opt/gtk+-2.12.9/bin/fc-cache -f -v. Said and done I suddenly have TT fonts in firefox (gtk2 version). After that I added the home/dsl/.fonts directory to the filetool.lst and made a backup. I think I imported around 40 MB of TT fonts but the backup.tar.gz file was only 13 something MB. So now I'm typing this with nice TT fonts from DSL 4.4RC1 (the "out of the box" version). I've been longing for the ability to use TT fonts in DSL almost from when I started using it. I think it was the 0.6 version or lower back then but when adressing this to the community it seemed to hard to be done and now it's so easy. DSL has truly developed during the years. Strictly speaking someone might not see this as a "remaster" but I view it like a "backup-remastering". Something I've been considering in the past because it's so easy to add to coming releases of DSL. Just add the backup.tar.gz and that's it. Well, I hope this post will be of use for someone because that is the purpose of sharing ideas in this forum.

Have a great and fun day today,meo

PS As you probably understand I had added a mydsl/optional dir to my drive containing the apps mentioned above DS

Posted by lucky13 on May 20 2008,15:06

Re fonts and how things render, there are ways to improve the appearance of different parts of various apps without resorting to either GTK2 or true type fonts. This can keep system resource demands on the lighter side than if one were to use GTK2. Here's a screenshot of my gtk1 firefox (1.0.6 from DSL 4.2.4 from my last hard drive install):< http://lucky13linux.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/firefox.png >

I edited my firefox userChrome.css to use artwiz snap; the same font can be used in gtk themes and in other apps (though snap sucks in terminal). The mydsl artwiz extension is only 44kb and provides several nice fonts which render very crisply without antialiasing (which I prefer to call blurring). The resource demands of GTK1 are much lower than GTK2. GTK2 and GTK2 extensions take up lots of extra space, use additional RAM, and require more CPU cycles.

Users can also change fonts used for rendering web pages if the defaults don't suit your tastes.

Posted by meo on May 22 2008,13:29

Hi!

"Si no hubiera gusto, no se vendiera la tela" is a matter of speech in Ecuador, where I lived for 5 years. The bottom line of this saying is that if there weren't different kinds of preferences for example in cloth and clothing, as this saying adresses, everybody would look the same and have the same taste. So essentially this is a matter of what you prefer and I have been longing for the ability to use TT fonts in DSL probably since I started using it for like 4 and a half years ago. So you maybe can imagine how happy I was when I got the hang of how to do it and I really like my current setup with DSL 4.3 using the original KNOPPIX file. Maybe someone wants to have it in a similar way so that was the reason I posted my current ideas and findings about it so that those hypothetic persons can benefit from it (and really feel the joy I feel). Then I have reached my purpose to help others to benefit from the knowledge and ideas I get as time goes by. I don't have so much time and energy to spare right now since I've taken on a pro bono case and recently an appeal was made to reconsider the matter including the ruling I had made in the case. So I must put a lot of time and energy into that. I hope you understand. Thank you for your post and if you want to be more specific about how you achieved the results you mentioned you are more than welcome to post them here.

Have fun however you want to use DSL,meo

Posted by meo on June 20 2008,16:52

Hello all remastering fans!

I just want to tell Y'all that making a "backup remastering" is functioning over my expectations. I have currently a backup.tar.gz file that takes up 42+ MB but booting DSL only 30+ MB of RAM is used. I have 256 MB of RAM on my old laptop but it works just fine with TTF fonts and other things I have put in the backup. I use regularly Firefox 3.0 even if it is much more demanding than the earlier version. So I would really like to here if someone has tried this way of "having it your way" when it comes to DSL. I think it looks very professional and yet so portable. So feel free to comment about your experiences.

Have fun "having it your way",meo

Posted by curaga on June 22 2008,13:27

Tmpfs ram usage is shown in the cache column, so it's not visible in torsmo, but it's still taken.. It can be swapped though.

Posted by meo on June 25 2008,21:27

Hi curaga!

What do you mean with cache column? I've had my doubts when it comes to the torsmo monitor a long time. The RAM usage and the SWAP usage doesn't add up in /home. The usage of resources in the /home line stays virtually the same even if you use extensions that are very resource "hungry" like Firefox 3.0 for example. Do you have any explanation to that? I'd appreciate any input in this matter just to know for the future.

Have fun out there in the cyberworld with DSL,meo

Posted by chaostic on June 25 2008,23:24

Quote (meo @ June 25 2008,17:27)

Hi curaga!

What do you mean with cache column? I've had my doubts when it comes to the torsmo monitor a long time. The RAM usage and the SWAP usage doesn't add up in /home. The usage of resources in the /home line stays virtually the same even if you use extensions that are very resource "hungry" like Firefox 3.0 for example. Do you have any explanation to that? I'd appreciate any input in this matter just to know for the future.

Have fun out there in the cyberworld with DSL,meo

The /home line is Torsmo getting diskfree info. It does not cross filesystems. Since /home is on a different filesystem then any union mounted extension, their disk usage will never change.

Posted by meo on June 25 2008,23:57

Hi chaostic!

Thank you for your comment. The thing is that I'm running DSL (embedded with the following boot code from a cd: dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1 frugal ) from a SDHC card attached to the usb port so I assumed that /home was a combination of the SWAP partition and the RAM memory but I might be wrong. So what would be /home in this case?

Have fun everybody with DSL,meo

EDIT: Since /home now have three values ( used, left and total ) I have to clarify that I'm referring to the used value that only changes within a range of about 8 MB.

Posted by chaostic on June 26 2008,01:03

Quote (meo @ June 25 2008,19:57)

Hi chaostic!

Thank you for your comment. The thing is that I'm running DSL (embedded with the following boot code from a cd: dsl fromhd=/dev/sda1 frugal ) from a SDHC card attached to the usb port so I assumed that /home was a combination of the SWAP partition and the RAM memory but I might be wrong. So what would be /home in this case?

Have fun everybody with DSL,meo

EDIT: Since /home now have three values ( used, left and total ) I have to clearify that I'm referring to the used value that only changes within a range of about 8 MB.

Run "df -h"then "ls -halF /"Whatever filesystem "/home/dsl" is on is what /home shows. Since you didn't say you had a persistent home, /home/dsl should be on /ramdisk/home/dsl/home in torsmo should be showing the free user space (Minus the default spacing saved for the root user) available on the /ramdisk/

Posted by meo on June 26 2008,01:50

Hi again chaostic!

Thanks for your post regarding torsmo. To me it seems that /home in my setup is the SWAP partition. Although the Swap Used line doesn't coincide with the /home used but it is what is closest to the actual space I have and that is just what I thought might be the case.

Have fun and keep on helping out in this forum,meo

Posted by curaga on June 26 2008,10:56

I meant the "cached" column you see when you type "free". Since caches & buffers can usually be thrown away it's OK torsmo doesn't calculate them into used ram, but tmpfs lives in caches, so it can't be thrown away if an app needs the ram.I'm not aware of any other means to find out your true free ram other than (torsmo value - used space in /ramdisk)

Posted by tikbalang on Nov. 30 2008,15:07

in remastering, is it necessary to boot dsl from the cd? i only started reading this thread from page 80, hoping to find instructions suitable for dsl 4.4.10. i boot dsl from dos.

is it just the KNOPPIX file that is getting changed? i just want to add framebuffer drivers.

Posted by curaga on Nov. 30 2008,16:06

No, you don't need to boot from the cd; and just the KNOPPIX file usually changes. Just don't overwrite it while still in DSL.

Posted by meo on June 17 2009,00:37

Hi Y'all!

Well I think this will be my last post in this forum since the development of DSL has come to and end it seems. This time has mostly been fun and educating. I hope that DSL will develop further although it seems to be a dream.